Blodgett fighting for spot Former UM star remains confident

After a winter starring for a team in France, Cindy Blodgett has entered WNBA training camp with a renewed sense of confidence.

Blodgett, who played for a team in the northern town of Lille, was the MVP of an all-star game and the league’s second-leading scorer when she abruptly left the team at the beginning of March.

The 5-foot-9 guard began practicing with the Sacramento Monarchs Wednesday, and like last year, will have to fight to keep her roster spot. She feels her experience with the club Entente Sportive Basket Villeneuve d’Ascq (ESBVA) will help her do that.

“I went out there, just did exactly what I had to do,” said the Clinton native and former UMaine star. “I played a lot and that’s what I had to do. And I think I feel a sense of ease now … I’m not so stressed. I got to play a lot. It’s fun to get out there and play, just play basketball.”

It was certainly a change from last summer, when she averaged 2.6 points and 6.7 minutes per game, and scored a season-high nine points in a June win over Portland.

Blodgett went to France in October and left the team around March 4, with several games left on the schedule. Although two French websites that follow the team indicated that she left for family-related reasons, Blodgett declined to comment Thursday on the reasons why she left early.

Whatever the reason, it is clear that Blodgett was a star in the short time she played for ESBVA. At the time Blodgett left France she was averaging almost 36 minutes per game, fifth-highest in the 12-team Ligue Feminine. She was averaging 20.8 points per game and had scored a league-best 35 points in a game against a team from Nice.

She was shooting 35.4 percent from 3-point range, 43.9 percent from the floor, and 89.1 from the free-throw line. Blodgett also averaged 3.9 rebounds and two assists per game.

Monarchs coach Sonny Allen had said in the past he wanted Blodgett to spend time playing overseas to get in more game experience.

“The main reason I went over there was to improve,” Blodgett said. “I’m in a position now where I’m not a sure bet [to make the Monarchs’ roster]. I’ve got to play well in this training camp. They have to decide they want me on the team.”

There are 20 players on the Monarchs’ training camp roster but Blodgett said five or six people have not yet reported because they’re still playing overseas. Rosters have to be down 11 players by May 28, the opening day of the regular season.

The Ligue Feminine is one of the top European Leagues and Blodgett said it may be considered, along with the WNBA, to be one of top women’s basketball organizations in the world. That may be because many WNBA play with the French teams in the off-season. Heather Burge, who was a Monarch in 1999, was on Blodgett’s team, which was a big help because Burge knows French and was able to translate.

Most of the time, Blodgett said, she was able to read hand signals from the ESBVA coach.

Blodgett didn’t have much time to travel around the country with practices twice a day, games Saturday night and just Sundays off. The problem was, she said, in France most everything except for restaurants, is closed Sunday.

After she left the team Blodgett lived in Boston where she worked out at Boston University (she was a BU assistant coach during the 1999-2000 college season). Blodgett recently signed a two-year, non-guaranteed contract with the WNBA that will not pay her if she does not make a WNBA roster.

To look at the Monarchs’ off-season moves, Blodgett’s future isn’t clear one way or the other.

Although the Monarchs traded their first-round pick to the Indiana Fever for center Kara Wolters, and picked mostly forward-centers in the draft, coach Sonny Allen did make a trade that sent Katy Steding to Seattle for veteran guard Edna Campbell.

Campbell, 32, averaged 13.9 points and 2.3 assists in 31.9 minutes per game last year. She started 16 games.