Dimitrov reflects on career before finale

March 5, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

Youngstown

For Bojana Dimitrov, basketball is more than just a game to her. It is her life.

It’s the reason she’s at Youngstown State. Heck, it’s the reason she’s in the United States in the first place.

So you can understand why she’s a little hesitant to talk about playing the last home game of her college career today. Dimitrov, known affectionately on campus as Boki, will be the lone senior honored by the women’s basketball team today. But she’s not one for attention.

“I’m trying to not talk about it because it is obviously very emotional for me,” Dimitrov said with a smile in her thick Serbian accent as she talked to reporters earlier this week. “But I guess I have to because I have to deal with media.”

Dimitrov was joking, of course — as she often does when in the spotlight.

But even with her infectious smile, it was clear the subject of her Penguin career coming to an end was difficult to stomach.

Four years ago, Dimitrov arrived on campus with just her English dictionary as a companion. She joked that she looked like a nerd walking around with it. But it soon became part of her charm.

Today closes a chapter in another important book. The 24-year-old will hear her name introduced over the Beeghly Center PA system one last time. She’ll flex her muscles with teammate Makayla Gasparek — her pregame ritual of choice — one last time. And she’ll play a home game for the Penguins one last time.

“I’ve been playing basketball for 13 years, which is more than half of my life,” she said. “These games are very important to me.”

Still, Dimitrov didn’t want to elaborate. She and her teammates were focusing only on winning today’s game against Loyola, she said. She added that getting to play her final regular-season game at the Beeghly Center makes it a little easier to accept.

“We know that our fans will be there, especially because it is Senior Night and we still owe it to the people to show them that we can do better,” she said.

Dimitrov said she owes a lot to the fans, who couldn’t help but fall in love with their foreign-born favorite. The Penguins have won five games in two years — all this season — yet they stick around.

“You see the same people and the same faces,” she said of the crowd. “They are almost like a family.”

Family is also important to Dimitrov.

Unfortunately, her real family won’t be making the trip. Instead, her parents, grandmother and older brother will be watching the Penguins online like they so often do. Dimitrov has planned a special acknowledgement for them.

She sees her family, which has never been to America, every summer and every so often on Skype, a video telephone software program. And while she misses them and her home country, she has no plans to leave the states.

You see, along with the dictionary, Dimitrov brought with her the hope of opportunity you often here about from “outsiders” but may often take for granted. She said she could have studied sociology and psychology in Serbia, but then she couldn’t have played basketball. Or she could have played the game there, and missed out on her education.

And anyone who know Dimitrov knows she wasn’t about to give up either.

Dimitrov said the decision to attend YSU was the “best decision of my life.” And winning her first game as a Penguin ranks up there with winning two Serbian National titles as the highlights of her career.

Ever the competitor, she added that she rarely plays the game for fun. But that never stops her from having fun on the court with and in front of her adopted family. So as she puts on the socks she bought at the YSU bookstore — her “happy socks” are her good luck charm even though she has to wear them inside out per NCAA regulations — Dimitrov will no doubt think about the opportunity she got to play her favorite game. And she’ll always treat it as such: an opportunity.

She could even define it for you.