“She bled blue and orange.”
That was the sentiment Shereka Wright, women’s basketball head coach, recalled of former Lady Maverick Rebekah Van Dijk.
On March 12, the UTA legend died. Van Dijk, 29, played from 2014 to 2018 and is notably the only Lady Maverick to have her jersey retired.
In her four years at UTA, the star center averaged 13.9 points and nine rebounds per game.
“She was probably one of the best bigs they had in the league,” Wright said. “Her ability, her skill set to be able to dominate inside the post and to be able to face up were some things that was very, very important.”
Her rebounding dominance was a reflection of her character and work ethic, said Krista Gerlich, former women’s basketball head coach. She recalled Van Dijk growing up on a farm and milking cows early in the morning.
“She did hard work her entire life, and that’s what rebounding is. It’s just hard work,” she said.
In Gerlich’s first season at UTA, the team only won four games. When Van Dijk enrolled as a freshman the following year, the team increased its win total to 17.
“It was the largest turnaround in the nation in Division I that year in women’s basketball,” Gerlich said. “I will forever be grateful to her for believing in us before she could even see what we were going to do.”
Van Dijk wasn’t just a great talent, she was someone opposing teams created defensive game plans for. Her strong hands, passing ability and catching radius were a few things opponents struggled to defend.
“When you’re a player in a conference where people are having to create their game plan around limiting you, that speaks to the type of talent that you’re giving,” said deputy athletic director Debbie Garcia.
Although the now-infamous transfer portal wasn’t much in that era, Gerlich said she appreciated Van Dijk’s loyalty to UTA while she was being recruited by other teams.
“It tells you how she was raised. She understood family, and it just speaks to her character about loyalty,” she said.
Although Van Dijk was unstoppable on the court, the Maverick community remembers her for her character and big heart.
Former teammate Brooke Alexander reflected on her and Van Dijk’s dynamic on the court and how she was initially attracted to UTA at the prospect of playing with a “big-time post player.”
Given that Alexander was the primary ball handler, the tandem directly influenced each other’s success on the court. Recruited for the point guard position, Alexander said the team’s vision was to play a two-man game with Van Dijk.
“One of my strengths was playing off a big post player like Bek and getting the ball to them,” Alexander said in an email. “I was always great friends with any post player I played with because our chemistry on the court was so strong because I fed them the ball.”
Alexander said she was in a depressed season in her life coming into UTA, and Van Dijk was the one to comfort her in those moments. Through Van Dijk, she was able to connect with Bible study groups and find community off the court.
“Bekah didn’t care what anyone else thought. If she liked it, she was going to go all out in it,” she said.
Alexander considers Van Dijk her first friend at UTA, with whom she participated in various organizations and attended Texas Rangers games.
Van Dijk was an NCAA Woman of the Year nominee in 2018. The title highlights the player’s combined athletic, academic and community impact.
Garcia said those closest to Van Dijk knew the two things that influenced her.
“Everybody who knew her will know that her faith and her family, those were the most important things to her,” she said.
Before heading to Las Vegas for the Western Athletic Conference Tournament in March, the Lady Mavericks honored Van Dijk with a patch on their jerseys. Garcia said she was extremely proud of Wright and her staff for taking the initiative to honor Van Dijk.
“She’s our guardian angel. We wanted to represent her in a way to bring light and to give her her respect because she is one of the most recognizable players that we’ve had here,” Wright said. “It was only right to honor her and to wear her number and her initials on our jersey, and I do believe that she was with us during that time.”
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