McGhee Enters Spotlight after Long Road to Recovery
Wednesday, March 4, 2015 | Women's Basketball, Scott Carter
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- The invitations to return had always been discarded, pushed aside for reasons that were deeply embedded in her psyche.
LaTonya McGhee was fond of her time at the University of Florida. She made great friends, earned her degree and made what remains the most memorable shot in postseason history for the UF women's basketball program.
That is just one of the reasons McGhee is being honored today as a Southeastern Conference Legend at the league's tournament in Little Rock, Ark.
“She had an amazing career that deserves to be celebrated,'' Gators head coach Amanda Butler said. “She is so proud of representing her university in this way. She has had an amazing comeback.”
Still, due to events beyond her control, McGhee's memories of her time at UF from 1989-93 sometimes seem from another lifetime.
A 6-foot-2 center out of Oxford, N.C., McGhee blossomed as a person and player at UF.
McGhee drew heavy interest from Division I schools while at J.F. Webb High. She averaged 20.4 points, 18.3 rebounds and five blocks per game as a senior. She had the kind of talent that can carry a team and pick up a program.
While in junior high, McGhee began to stand out in a literal sense.
She earned the nickname “Tree” because she was taller than most of her classmates, male and female.
The nickname stuck when she arrived at UF a year before Butler.
McGhee earned first-team All-SEC honors as a senior and was a key building block for head coach Carol Ross when she took over the program prior to McGhee's sophomore season in 1990.
“We're about as effective without 'Tree' as the Phoenix Suns are without Charles Barkley,'' Ross told the Orlando Sentinel in 1993 after McGhee made the biggest shot of her career.
In the first NCAA Tournament game in program history -- March 17, 1993 -- the unranked Gators played at No. 19 Bowling Green in front of a hostile crowd of almost 5,000.
The game was tied at 67 as the final seconds disappeared. The ball found its way into McGhee's hands. She knew time was running out, so McGhee, out of her comfort zone 15 feet from the basket, fired up a shot.
“That was a sweet, sweet moment,'' McGhee said Tuesday from her home in Fayetteville, N.C.
She told reporters after the game that she practiced the shot and knew it was good even if it did bank in off the glass.
Butler still chuckles at McGhee's memory of the game-winning basket with two seconds left that lifted Florida a 69-67 victory.
“That was so absolutely not true,'' Butler said Tuesday. “I wouldn't say it was a lucky shot, but it was a little outside her range, it was a little off-balance. There was a couple of things that weren't necessarily things we practiced.
“It was just meant to be.”
After 22 years away and a remarkable journey since that shot, McGhee accepted an invitation to return to UF for the program's annual alumni weekend in early February.
Like the moment she fired up that shot, she felt it was finally time.
*****
The summer after graduating, McGhee joined former Gators teammate Sophia Witherspoon and more than 300 other players at a USA Basketball camp to try out for that summer's World University Games in Buffalo, N.Y.
McGhee and Witherspoon both made the U.S. squad and helped the Americans claim bronze. Soon afterward, in the days before the WNBA existed, McGhee packed her belongings for Germany, where she would play professionally for a franchise in Bochum.
McGhee played a couple of seasons overseas but immediately made it a goal to return to America when the founding of the WNBA was announced in April 1996. The new women's professional league would not start until June 1997, so McGhee remained in Germany but submitted her name for the WNBA Draft.
And then tragedy struck.
As McGhee and an Australian teammate drove back from a game in Poland with their coach, who was driving, their car was struck by another vehicle in a violent head-on collision.
Amazingly, all three survived although rescuers later told her they didn't know how.
McGee's coach suffered a fractured skull and brain damage. Her teammate broke her back. McGhee crushed her knee and suffered internal injuries and massive facial damage.
“I'm here,'' she said. “No one knows how I made it out of that accident alive.”
The misfortune ended McGhee's basketball career. As friends and players she competed against began their careers in the WNBA, McGee underwent numerous surgeries and extended hospital stays.
For the next three years, her life was a vicious cycle of surgeries, infections and pain. Her parents often traveled to Germany for extended visits to assist her. McGhee's professional team provided a home-care nurse and around-the-clock care on the rare occasions when McGhee was able to leave the hospital.
“She was gone for a while and in another country, and then the accident happened and you kind of lost track of her,'' Butler said.
McGhee said there were other complications, including seizures from some of the medicines she took, infections caused by a piece of surgical glass left in her face after a surgery, and severe facial nerve damage. Eventually, German doctors told her they had done all they could do.
McGhee returned to North Carolina and moved back in with her parents so they could help her deal with the pain and limitations she faced physically.
Meanwhile, those invitations to return to her alma mater for alumni weekend began to arrive but McGhee, still searching for a post-accident identity, struggled at accepting her new life.
Her shattered dream of playing in the WNBA hurt as much if not more than her battered body.
“I always wanted to play on my home soil professionally. It was very hard for me not to be able to,'' she said. “It took me awhile before I could watch WNBA games.”
Butler (photo, left, with McGhee under the basket) is confident McGhee would have had a successful professional career at home.
“She had upper-body strength that was just unique to a female,” Butler said. “She had long arms and the build. As her point guard, she was my favorite target. I think she would have been a star.
“It's heartbreaking that she didn't get the chance.”
*****
McGhee's life today is as good as it has been since her days at UF.
She lives on her own with the help of an in-home nurse. Several years after the accident she would even go and play an occasional game of pick-up basketball, although at a much slower pace than during her prime.
The 44-year-old McGhee flirted with the idea of coaching in high school but realized being around the game wasn't good for her. Too many memories of what was and what can never be.
She now works part-time at a Dick's Sporting Goods store to remain involved in sports and has developed a love affair with golf and repairing golf equipment for customers at the store.
When the Gators played at Savannah State earlier this season, McGhee came to the game. It was an opportunity for her to reconnect with Butler and her past.
After years of fears about a return to UF because of her disabilities, McGhee was honored on the court with other former Gators during the Feb. 8 game against Tennessee
She felt a combination of relief and joy.
“It was a scary moment to go back,'' she said. “I was so nervous. I have a lot of medical issues. I had not seen these people in years and they had not seen me. I didn't know how they would accept it. My face was crushed. They rebuilt it very well, but there are still some things I see and others can see.”
Butler said McGhee had nothing to worry about. McGhee interacted with former teammates and others at a get-together at Butler's home and it felt like old times.
They told stories, caught up on each other's lives, and rekindled relationships that had long ago faded.
“She is a very, very genuine person,'' Butler said. “She has such a deep, deep passion for people and the people she played with.”
McGhee said the trip “really broke the ice on my fears.”
As she prepared Tuesday to make the trip to the SEC Tournament, she faced another fear. McGhee, her life altered forever by an automobile accident, long ago overcame any fears of driving.
It's not unusual for her to get in her car and take a road trip to clear her mind. However, she has not flown since the trip home from Germany more than 15 years ago. The pressure in her face on takeoff and landing that day caused her severe pain, another traumatic event related to her accident.
Still, that wasn't going to stop her. She is used to dealing with fear and pain. In her mind, another one awaited when it was her turn to be recognized at halftime of today's Florida-Auburn game.
“I don't know if everyone knows who I am,” McGhee said.
