Paloma graduate Woodley set for March Madness with WVU
Sydney Woodley and West Virginia will play Columbia in the NCAA Tournament. (Photo courtesy of Sydney Woodley) By Doug Spoon, Editor One o...
By Doug Spoon, Editor
One of Menifee’s most successful high school girls basketball players in recent years will be on the national stage Saturday when former Paloma Valley High guard Sydney Woodley plays for West Virginia in the opening round of the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament.
The sixth-seeded Mountaineers (24-7) will play No. 11 seed Columbia (24-6) Saturday at 11 a.m. PDT in the first round of the Region 2 bracket in Chapel Hill, NC. For Menifee residents wishing to follow the game, it will be televised nationally on ESPNEWS, with live stats and game notes available on WVUsports.com.
Woodley is a 2021 graduate of Paloma Valley, where she was a key player on one of the area’s best-ever two-season team performances.
In 2019-20, she averaged 15.4 points and 10.9 rebounds in helping to lead coach Matt Dale’s Wildcats to the CIF-SS championship. Paloma advanced to the CIF State championship game, which was cancelled because of the outbreak of COVID-19 that week. Then in 2020-21, after Paloma was moved up in CIF divisions, she averaged 16.6 points and 10.1 rebounds in leading the Wildcats again to the CIF-SS finals, where they lost to Eisenhower.
Woodley, who scored a total of 1,927 points in her high school career, was named to the All-CIF team in 2020 and 2021 and the All-State team in 2020.
After high school, Woodley enrolled at Cal State Long Beach, where continued her basketball career and received her Bachelor’s degree in three years. She then sought a Master’s degree in journalism and was planning to attend Arizona State as a student only when she got a call from West Virginia coach Mark Kellogg.
“They were looking for another guard to help them, especially defensively,” Woodley said in a phone interview on Friday. “I thought about it for about a week, then I decided to take it. I am also pursuing my Master’s in journalism there and expect to graduate next year.”
Woodley plans a career in sports broadcasting. Before that, however, she is focused on West Virginia’s tournament challenge. This will be her first game back from a concussion suffered in the first game of the Big 12 Conference Tournament.
In 30 games played, she has averaged 15.7 minutes off the bench, averaging 3.8 points and 2.1 rebounds per game. Her strength has been on defense, the job asked of her by Kellogg. She has 50 steals this season, one of the highest totals on the team.
“It’s been amazing,” Woodley said of her time at WVU. “I’ve had a lot of growth. I had basically stopped playing basketball last summer when I thought I was going to Arizona State, so I had to get comfortable being back on the court. In the beginning I didn’t play a lot, but I contributed by applying defensive pressure.
“Now that I’ve had more playing time, being the first guard off the bench, I’ve also had a huge improvement in my offensive game.”
Woodley said at first, she wondered whether she had made the right decision to forego studies at Arizona State’s award-winning journalism program and put basketball back in her routine. There were times of regret – perhaps mostly during one of West Virginia’s harshest winters ever, with temperatures something dipping to 20 below with massive snowstorms.
“I had never experienced that before,” she admitted about the weather. “But I really like it here. The people are very nice. It’s kind of homey, and a great community.”
