College women's basketball: Twist of fate brings Easton to SFCC, and both parties couldn't be happier

In the revolving door of NJCAA athletics, coaches know they’re only as good as their recruiting class.

And that means constant travel, countless hours spent watching game film and painstaking dedication to networking with prep and collegiate colleges across the nation. In a nutshell, recruits don’t just fall into the lap of coaches.

With one exception: Ariel Easton.

The 5-foot-7 guard lit up Palm Beach State College (Fla.) her freshman year with per-game averages of 16.8 points, 3.2 rebounds and 2.3 assists, and her 3.2 treys a game and 46 percent shooting from beyond the arc ranked her in the top 10 nationally in NJCAA Division I.

Sounds like a match made in heaven, right? On the surface, yes. But behind closed doors, far from it.

After starting out the season 12-7, the Lady Panthers’ program was shut down without notice due to do internal problems. Easton, who could only watch as her All-American-worthy campaign was taken hostage, was fittingly distraught.

“It felt horrible,” said Easton, who declined to discuss the cause of the controversial cap to the season. “It was one of the worst feelings ever to just have something I love doing taken away from me.”

Instead of taking the news lying down, she remained proactive as she weighed her options on whether to stay with or leave the sinking ship.

“At first I decided the problems on the team were going to be gone and I could possibly work through the issues and play with the new team and be just fine,” said Easton, who hails from basketball country in South Bend, Ind. “But I realized that was too big of a risk to take to not play another season, so I decided to transfer.”

Her next step was finding a program with a winning atmosphere. Enter State Fair, who was coming off a 29-6 campaign that culminated with a Region 16 championship and the program’s first-ever national tournament win.

“I looked up the top (NJCAA) schools in the nation and State Fair was one of the tops,” she said. “I called down and got started.”

For State Fair head coach Kevin Bucher, it was a no-brainer to welcome her into the State Fair family with open arms.

And his decision has proved fruitful.

Averaging a team-high 17.7 points and three treys per contest, Easton has proved to be a leader on the court, posting double figure points in every contest but one this year (a 77-67 win over Wabash). But her leadership hasn’t been confined to the hardwood.

“It’s been one of those things where we’ve been fortunate to have some very good transfers come in and she’s been as good on the court and off,” Bucher said. “She’s been a leader and she hates losing, she wants to win, she plays hard and she wants to lead by example. And that’s really what the other players like about her as well.”

With 12 players gone from last year’s squad, including all-Americans Ciara Leak and Ebony Davis, along with 95 percent of the scoring offense, Easton was counted on to lead from day one.

That likely affected her shooting percentages (40 percent from the floor, 33 percent from beyond the arc), which have dropped considerably from last year.

“I felt like toward the beginning with us not having so much production scoring-wise I had to do a lot of the scoring,” Easton said. “Now I’m feeling like they’re starting to build that confidence and step up. Also teams are playing me so tough in denial where I’ve got to look to my teammates, and they’re producing.”

They’re producing enough to lead the Lady Roadrunners to a 14-5 mark and a Region 16-best record of 4-1, a half game ahead of a Crowder squad they defeated handily at home on Jan. 25.

“I think we play well together,” Easton said. “I think we have a young team, but it’s also a strong team. We’re just getting better and better every game.”

And Bucher doesn’t believe his team — or Easton for that matter — has even scratched the surface of its potential.

“What’s nice is we still haven’t reached the full 40 minutes of a perfect game, so there’s things that we can improve on and we still work hard to improve every day,” Bucher said.

“Compared to the first semester, there’s a lot of growth that’s happened since then and it’s nice. Coach Scheel and I were just talking about this the other day, to see how different some of the players’ work ethic is and the emergence of a hunger as far as wanting to do well, it’s a good sign.”

The Lady Roadrunners have never raised back-to-back Region 16 banners, but Easton believes there’s a first time for everything.

“I see us making it to nationals — not with ease, because it’s going to take some work, but we have the potential to do it,” Easton said. “We’ve heard Bucher talk about what legacy we’re going to have when we leave, and we’ve got our goals set high.”