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THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT PUBLICATION OF THE UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO, SINCE 1950
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Volume 62 No. 67
Legette-Jack triumphs in life through family & love for basketball JON GAGNON
Senior Sports Editor
Felisha Legette-Jack walked the halls of her high school with her head down, fearful of making eye contact and connecting with others. Then she found basketball. Actually, her brothers introduced her to it. They were tired of their nerdy sister sitting around the house and reading books all day. One day, they said to her, “You need to do something.” She wanted to do what they did – not what her sisters were doing, which was gossiping about boys – so she went to the courts, shot by herself and watched. Basketball became her life. It also transformed her. “When I started going to the gym, I found myself looking at people’s eyes, getting my head up and getting a real celebration of myself through the gift of basketball,” said Legette-Jack, who just finished her first season as head coach of the women’s basketball team. “Because of this game of basketball, it gave me such confidence to be right or wrong. And so I owe this game everything.”
Now, she gives back by instilling her love of the game into a new generation of players at UB and trying to revive a program that has struggled in recent years. In person, Legette-Jack is both imposing and motherly. She has a temper like Bobby Knight but she can also wrap her long arms around a needy player and make her feel like she belongs. Both come from the same source: inner passion. She taps into it when she plays basketball, when she coaches and when she’s home with her family or reading the Bible. It defines her and defines what she expects from her players. “[My passion] comes from my family; we all were very passionate,” Legette-Jack said. “Every time we go out to play, the game was always about going out to win. I remember that’s how we competed. In order to win, you have to be passionate.” On the trip to Cleveland just a few a weeks ago for the MidAmerican Conference Tournament, Legette-Jack made her team watch the movie Invictus – a tale about Nelson Mandela bringing South Africa together through rugby.
SEE SPRING FEST, PAGE 10
When the Bulls found themselves tied with Miami Ohio at halftime, she reminded them of the movie and recited a poem from it: “You are the master of your fate, and you are the captain of your soul,” she told them. “I challenged each and every one of them what their captain role and master role would be in connection with each other,” LegetteJack said. “To go out there and perform for UB and when you come in this locker room, be able to look in this mirror, if you left it all out there, win, lose or draw, but if you didn’t, you have to live with that for the rest of the summer.” The Bulls outscored Miami Ohio 52-40 in the second half and received 19 second-half points from freshman guard Mackenzie Loesing, as they advanced to the quarterfinals of the MAC Tournament. “One of the big things that [Legette-Jack] stresses a lot is that to be able to have chemistry on the court, we have to be able to have chemistry off the court first,” Loesing said. “It’s a family atmosphere. It’s not about who the best player is, who’s the most athletic, who has the most talent. It’s about who comes to play, who’s ready to play and who gives their all every single day.”
In Legette-Jack’s playing career at Syracuse University, she earned honors as Big East Freshman of the Year, was all-league three times and left her mark as the school’s all-time leading rebounder and second-leading scorer. When her senior year came around, she expected to be an AllAmerican and play professional basketball afterward. She had given everything she had in the offseason to the game. Legette-Jack wanted to be the absolute best she could be. In the third game of the season, she tore her ACL. She compares the pain to giving birth to a child, but worse. “When I blew my knee out, I just thought that my life was over,” Legette-Jack said. “This game has done so much for me. And that was taken away, so how do I continue and sustain my confidence?” She did it with the help of an unlikely source – a janitor. When most patients are recovering from ACL surgery, they leave the hospital within three days. Legette-Jack needed seven – spending her final few days at the student health center – as she just wasn’t mentally prepared to leave. SEE FELISHA, PAGE 12
Changing face
Drag Queens, Kings take the stage at the CFA LISA EPSTEIN
Asst. Features Editor
Max Levitt never performs the same song and never wears the same costume twice. He spends hours perfecting each routine, song, dance and costume. He makes his own outfits from thrift store finds, spending up to two and a half hours on his makeup, crafting himself and transforming into his character: Martha Murder. For his performance on Thursday, Levitt performed in a dress he made from garbage bags – but by the time he put on the dress, he was already in the mindset of Martha Murder. Levitt, a senior theater design major, participated in last Thurs-
day’s UB-A-Drag Amateur Drag show held in the Center For the Arts Black Box Theatre. The event, part of LGBTA Awareness Week, showcased amateur and professional drag queens and kings from around the Buffalo area. Levitt said the idea of drag has changed in the last four years, gaining popularity from the show RuPaul’s Drag Race, which has made it a mainstay in the gay culture today. He said he loves doing shows for the performance art. For Levitt, though, the transformation into Martha Murder is more than just makeup and an outfit. “For me, it’s about my state of mind,” Levitt said. “It’s where I put myself. I can be Martha in and out of drag. It’s sort of just a swap in
the head space for me. The more in makeup I am, the more I can see myself as Martha. But if I have to think as her to figure out what my song choice is, I’ll do it.” Levitt taught himself how to do his makeup by experimenting and watching RuPaul’s Drag Race. He said playing around with his makeup taught him what works for him. While he is not normally into watching YouTube makeup tutorials, Levitt said he recently watched a video on how to glue his eyebrows down because his usual routine wasn’t working. Thursday marked Levitt’s first performance in the UB-A-Drag show. SEE DRAG QUEENS, PAGE 7
Alexa Strudler, The Spectrum
Senior theater design major Max Levitt (above) applies his makeup before taking the stage in last Thursday’s UB-A-Drag amateur drag show held in the Center For the Arts Black Box Theatre. Levitt spends up to two and a half hours preparing himself to take the stage as "Martha Murder."