Jesse Hicks' return to Utah wasn't very memorable.
The former Starzz center was an unremarkable part of the Orlando Miracle's come-from-behind win, 88-80, over Utah Tuesday night.
It would have been easy to overlook her single shot attempt and one foul in four minutes on the floor. Easy, unless you know where she's been and how hard she's been working to get back on the floor of a WNBA game.
At the end of the league's inaugural season in 1997, Hicks found out she was pregnant.
"It wasn't planned," she said with a smile after Tuesday's game. "I wasn't allowed to workout at all, but I continued coaching at Bowie State University. I was just so tired."
She remained on injured reserve for Utah but was waived right before the draft in 1998. Hicks gave birth to Jamon Emmanuel Hicks that spring but had a hard time recovering.
"The doctor gives you six weeks to get your body back to normal," she said. "I didn't recover like that. Three months, it took me. And I'd gained a lot of weight — 60 pounds. But I had the desire to get back (into shape)."
She played in Spain for two years, all the while planning to return to the U.S. and the WNBA.
"I knew (playing overseas) was the only way to get back into shape," she said.
She was invited to Orlando's training camp this spring and made the team. Her current coach, Carolyn Peck, said she doesn't think having a baby has affected Hicks' play at all.
"I think Jesse's done a great job for us," she said. "She's a strong, very physical player."
Pregnancy is a medical condition that only warrants congratulations in the NBA. But in the WNBA it means a player misses a minimum of a year in a career where youth matters.
But motherhood, too, is a limited opportunity, and so many professional women athletes have chosen to lose a year of playing instead of postponing a family.
Houston Comet Sheryl Swoopes is probably the most famous. She missed half of her first season recovering from pregnancy and is now the league's second-leading scorer, averaging 24.9 points per game. But there are others, many others, including three of Hicks' teammates.
Hicks said she would recommend to young players that they not interrupt their playing careers to have a family.
"I would definitely wait," she said emphatically. "Having my son took something out of me. I hope when he starts playing, it goes to him, that fight in me."
But she doesn't regret doing it herself.
"He's the joy of my life," she said. "A lot of people in this profession might have aborted, but that's something I don't believe in. Kids are just beautiful, a gift from God."
Utah coach Fred Williams doesn't have any mothers on his team but said he wouldn't think twice about a woman's decision to start a family — even if it meant he'd lose a good player.
E-mail: adonaldson@desnews.com