Dudley-Heft joins ranks of JMU’s finest

Where Missy Dudley-Heft goes, crowds follow.

They did in high school. They did in college. And they did it again Thursday night when the Western Albemarle High School graduate was inducted in the James Madison University Athletic Hall of Fame.

Friends, family and fans from Southwest Virginia, Central Virginia, New England and even Alaska sent their RSVPs to cheer Dudley-Heft one more time as she was inducted along with lacrosse star Lynn Craun, distance runner Bethany Eigel, baseball player Todd Winterfeldt and former JMU president Ronald E. Carrier, who brought football to the Harrisonburg campus and was there when JMU climbed into the Division I ranks.

“For her to be inducted along with Ronald Carrier says a lot,” Charley Armstrong said. “He put JMU on the map.”

Armstrong knows what it is like to watch Dudley-Heft in action. The former WAHS principal had left the school the year before his basketball star graduated. But he came back, just to watch her sign a letter of intent to play college ball at JMU.

“She was an excellent student athlete,” Armstrong said. “She probably is the first female athlete from Western who signed with a college team. She made a great impact on establishing girls’ basketball here.”

She didn’t do to badly in track either. Dudley-Heft ran hurdles and relays, and threw the discus, not to mention winning the state high school championship titles in the high jump and shot put.

But it was the hardwood where Missy shined. And fans flocked to watch her flashy moves and friendly smile. She scored more than 1,000 points at Western, and that was just in two years.

“She transferred from Clifton Forge her junior year, so she only played for us her junior and senior years,” said Skip Hudgins, her former basketball coach at WAHS. “I would have to say she is the very best girls basketball player ever to have played at Western. She is probably the second best basketball player that I coached. There was one young man, who was better than Missy.”

During her two-year stay, the Warriors went 40-9 and Dudley-Heft was the Valley District scoring leader both seasons. She was named to the All Valley District Team, All Region II Team and was an honorable mention USA All American.

“I have never coached any basketball player who was more of a gamer,” Hudgins said. “She was tenacious; very, very competitive. She played at a different level than everybody else.

“When she came in 1983 we had had a winning season, but she turned us from being a good solid team to being a great one.

“She has a special place in my heart.”

It was a reluctant girl, however, that showed up in Central Virginia, but that quickly changed.

“My dad worked for Virginia Power, and he was transferred from Clifton Forge to Charlottesville,” said Dudley-Heft, who took a break from making pumpkin-shaped cookies for her two young daughters (the oldest, Madison, is named for her alma mater).

“I only had two years of high school left. I had spent 16 years in Clifton Forge, and I didn’t really want to move.

“But in retrospect, it was a good move, because I got to play for a bigger school and play against bigger schools. My dad knew what he was doing.”

Missy father went and interviewed the basketball coaches in the area before he chose where the family would live.

“Skip Hudgins was at Western, and my dad was impressed by him,” Missy said. “Jim Robinson also was an assistant there, and now he is a coaching on the college level.”

While she credits both men for her success at Western, it was some even younger men who helped her hone her skills. Basketball was what you did when you grew up in a small town. But there weren’t many girls out on the courts back then in Clifton Forge. So Missy played with the boys in the neighborhood.

“All my friends were boys,” she said. “It was a small town, so everyone would ride there bikes over to the park everyday after school and pickup teams and play. I played against boys all the time, and I think that is what helped me.

“I also had a great high school coach at Clifton Forge, Carol Van Lear.”

Another coach spotted her potential pretty soon after Missy donned her Warriors uniform.

“Western played in the Valley League, so she was involved in games very close to us,” said Sheila Moorman, who was the head coach at James Madison University. “It was easy to get to see her play.

“From Day One — and I can count on two hands the players that I have said this about — I knew that I wanted on our team from the first time I saw her play.

“Missy is a great athlete. She was 5-foot-10 with guard skills. She had a great range with her shot and she had good hops. She could get in there and rebound with the best of them.

“She was an all around athlete. She played with great enthusiasm and she just loved the game.”

The one worry the JMU coach had was the Missy was playing right next door to the University of Virginia.

“We lived in fear that Virginia would wake up and decide to recruit her,” Moorman said.

But Dudley-Heft signed with the Dukes … and worked her way into the lineup and into becoming, as Coach Moorman said, a fan favorite.

“She played with a lot of confidence, and there was never another player who was more popular with the team,” Moorman said. “And she played with a lot of flair. I would tell her that you don’t get style points, but she was a real fan favorite.

“And she knew a lot of people. The two things I remember about Missy are that she played her heart out and she had so many friends.”

And they came to watch her play.

“That was a memorable era for us,” said Milla Sue Wisecarver, assistant sports information director. “Because Missy was so outgoing, students began to follow us on road games. We took a whole contingent down to Wilmington the first year we won the conference, and I bet most of them went because of her.”

Missy had the stats to backup her popularity off and on the court.

She scored 1,284 points and was named to the Colonial Athletic Association Team of the Decade (1985 to 1995) as JMU compiled a 108-16 record over her four-year collegiate career. While she had some impressive outings individually — including scoring 17 points to help upset highly-favored UVa in University Hall — it was the team victories that she prefers to talk about.

“There was one game when I had 33 points,” she finally admitted, “but it was one of those days where you could throw something up backwards and it would go in.

“The memorable moments were when we were the conference champs four years in a row. And I remember going to the Sweet 16 my very first year.”

She also tied teammate Donna Budd for the school record for the most consecutive games played at JMU.

“But we went to the NCAA tournament four years in a row, so we got to play in a lot more games,” she said.

After JMU, Dudley-Heft spent three years in Alaska before coming back to the East Coast for grad school. Today, she works at the Smith Mountain Lake YMCA, where she is helping to train tomorrow’s stars. Her own-nine-year-old seems to be following in Mom’s footsteps. She enjoys basketball and soccer. No so with the younger one.

“She would rather be chasing butterflies and designing fashion,” the proud Mom said. “I may have to have my seven year old design something for me to wear to the induction ceremony,” she said with a laugh.

And while she said she was extremely excited about the individual honor, she quickly added … “I was just part of the team.”