No one needs to remind Creighton senior guard Tessa Leytem about how fast time goes by. As a roller coaster regular season winds down so to does Leytem’s four-year career, and with just one home game remaining on Sunday, the 5-foot-11 guard from Dubuque, Iowa finds herself looking back and trying to process all that she has experienced during her days as a collegiate basketball player.
“I think it’s kind of astonishment almost. Looking back to freshman year there are definitely points where you kind of wonder if you’re ever going to get to [Senior Day],” Leytem said. “It’s kind of crazy to me almost that it’s already here. It goes so fast. I know you hear that all of the time, but it really does go so fast. It’s kind of overwhelming.”
Barring a late-season run, Sunday’s 1:00 p.m. home finale against newly crowned Big East regular-season champion DePaul will be the final game Leytem will play at D.J. Sokol Arena. Through 88 games played, Leytem is averaging 1.4 points with a career-high of 14 points in a win over Providence earlier this season being the only time she has scored in double figures as a Bluejay. Her contribution to the team is not one that will be seen in the stat sheets, and it’s not one that can be measured by numbers.
“I hesitate to find anyone who could say anything negative about Tessa,” head coach Jim Flanery said. “We always joke about trying to find anyone who could say anything bad about her, because she is just a really really sweet kid who’s motives or desire to be a good teammate or get better every day are never questioned.”
“She’s come a long way as a basketball player. She’s getting to play. She’s not an all-conference player and she won’t get down in the record books for anything from a production standpoint, but it’s been a pleasure to have her in our program. It’s neat to hear our younger players, because I’ll ask them once in awhile, who has done a good job of taking care of you as an upperclassmen? Last year and this year you get a lot of people who were acknowledging how much she has meant to them as an older player. Our freshmen and sophomores think a lot of her, and I think that says a lot about what she’s about and how much the team is important to her.”
In case anyone doubts the sincerity of that last line, Leytem’s story of how she got to this point says otherwise. As a high school senior she set her school’s single-season record with 408 points, earning a First Team All-State nod in the process. Instead of going to a Division II school where she probably would have played more minutes and scored more points, she came to Creighton. Growing up, it was always a dream of hers to play basketball at the Division I level, and no matter what it meant for her individual career, it was a path she was going to continue to follow.
“I really wanted to play Division 1 basketball my whole life. Once I found Creighton I knew I wanted to be here,” Leytem said. “It was just a dream of mine that I was very passionate about, and I knew that if I wouldn’t have went for it, if I would have chosen a different path, I would have always wondered what if I would have went to Creighton? What if I would have stayed one more year? What if I would have done this and that? I was just very passionate about it, and I believed in myself.”
The life of a student-athlete at the Division I level wasn’t a glamorous one for Leytem, especially her freshman year. Since she wasn’t on an athletic scholarship she worked in the basketball offices on top of going to school and practice. She worked 20 hours a week to earn money that she never actually saw. It all went straight to her tuition.
Leytem’s (right) enthusiasm and hard work paid off with a scholarship her at the beginning of her sophomore season (Streur / WBR)
Her hard work paid off in the fall of her sophomore season when a few weeks into preseason practice, Leytem received a phone call from her head coach as she was about to walk into her Spanish class. What transpired during the conversation was the one thing that will always come to her mind first when she tells her children and grandchildren about her time at Creighton.
“It was probably a couple weeks into preseason of my sophomore year,” she said. “Preseason was going good. I didn’t really have any notion or anything about what was going to happen, but I was about to walk into my Spanish class and I got a call from Flan, and I was like, ‘Oh gosh, am I about to get kicked off the team? What’s going to happen?’ He just called me and said we want to offer you a scholarship. I think I did a double take. I don’t really remember how the conversation went. I just remember saying thank you multiple times, and he just told me not to thank him, because I had earned it. That meant a lot to me. When I went to class I could not focus on anything, and right afterwards I called my family and told them. My dad totally did not believe me. It was pretty awesome.”
When she looks back on her career that is the moment that stands out, but she shares it with everyone who has been a part of the journey from her family off the court that she called that day to the one on it that has grown up with every day at Creighton.
“It’s definitely something I’m glad I went for,” Leytem said, “but I couldn’t have done any of it without all of my teammates that I’ve had throughout the past four years just welcoming me and wanting me to do well and wanting me to keep working. Same with my coaches and my family. It’s definitely not just something that I did on my own. It came with a lot of other people too.”
As Creighton sits one game under .500 at 13-14 with three regular season games remaining, Leytem isn’t going to let what may end up being a disappointing year from the program’s perspective put a damper on any of the positive things she has experienced as a Bluejay.
“That’s just kind of my personality. I’m not going to let five games or whatever define our season or my four years here,” Leytem said. “So much more goes into that just a win-loss record. Obviously that would be the worst-case scenario [to lose out], but if that were to happen there are still so many bright sides to look at.”
If she has learned anything about winning and losing during her senior season, it’s how much more the success of her freshman year — when the team earned an at-large bid and advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament — means to her now. As a walk-on she was just along for the ride. As a senior and team leader to 10 freshmen and sophomores, she is more appreciative now of what it took to reach that point.
“It definitely showed how difficult it is to really be a good team and win a game even,” she said. “Now that I’m a senior and have more of a leadership role in that I didn’t realize how much goes into it. Especially as a freshman when we made it to the NCAA Tournament. Honestly, at that point I probably didn’t know how awesome that actually was, but if that were to happen to us this year I don’t know what I would do. I would be so happy. It’s definitely a different perspective. You look at winning and success much differently.”
