The 23-year-old American-born played alongside Harvard and Maryland in her college career
Sunday night marked a milestone in Dominican basketball, with the first debut of a player from the Caribbean country in the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA)the highest-level women’s professional basketball league in the United States.
Katie Benzan, a 23-year-old guard of Dominican descent became the first player in the country’s history to play in the aforementioned league. On May 5, it was announced that Benzan had achieved a position on the inaugural roster of Washington Mystics. His debut, although short (he only played two minutes), was productive in generating an assist for his team, which helped to obtain victory on Sunday night against Minnesota Lynx by a score of 78 over 66.
The five-foot-six-inch player was not selected during the 2022 WNBA Rookie Drawhowever, impressed enough in preseason camp to earn a spot with Washington. Benzan he averaged four points and two runs from three to earn his roster spot.
In his last year of college basketball with the University of Marylandthe player of Dominican descent averaged 10.2 points per game and was sixth among college basketball players in the NCAA in three-point shooting percentage (44.5%). Because of this, she was selected as Honorable Mention in the AP All-America and was also chosen as part of the Second Team of the All-Big Ten (the conference your college plays for).
With your game ticket on Sunday night, Benzan became just the first player of Maryland to debut in the WNBA since 2020, when the player Kaila Charles did too.
In this play, the Dominican Katie Benzan @katiekbenz (#14 in red), on his debut in the #WNBAthe first woman from Quisquey to play in the women’s basketball league. #Dominican pride ???????????? pic.twitter.com/IBGneBI9b1
– Richard Bazil (icRichardBazil) May 9, 2022
