Thirty-three Rutgers women’s basketball players who have gone on to play professionally in the WNBA proudly remember Rutgers as their home base while training to reach stardom.
 
The world’s superstars of 2020 are on a different playing field. Healthcare professionals and frontline workers battling COVID-19 epitomize heroism and altruism in the face of crisis. One of these selfless superstars received her training on the same grounds as the 33 future WNBA players from the Scarlet Sisterhood.
 
Christa Evans characterized the core values of a Scarlet Knight – specializing in grit, accountability, and respect. A four-year mainstay on the hardwood for the Scarlet Knights from 2011-15, she was as tenacious as they come for a 6-foot-3 center. She fought through injuries and pain to support her teammates through 131 career games, a remarkable number considering a lingering fight with quadriceps tendonitis.
 
The two-time team captain helped lead Rutgers to iconic moments in the program’s storied history – the 2014 WNIT Championship, the first game in the Big Ten Conference, and the historic 900th career win by her head coach.

The indelible lessons from said head coach C. Vivian Stringer and the game of basketball were an integral supplement to her education as a public health major, both of which prepared her for her current job and the emotionally-draining first year as a critical care nurse in the Intensive Care Unit at RWJ University Hospital Somerset.
 
“I can’t express how much Coach Stringer set me up for this role,” Evans said. “The mental and physical toughness, the ability to go out there and work. She never takes the easy way out, and it’s really set me up for where I am today.”
 
In Evans’ final collegiate appearance, an NCAA Tournament Second Round game at perennial powerhouse UConn in 2015, she remembers Coach Stringer’s inspirational speech to this day. It was centered around the sports cliché, do-or-die. Ball is life for so many, but it is not life and death.
 
Now that Evans deals in literal life and death, with the latter at an alarming frequency, she knows that pregame speech in Storrs, Connecticut wasn’t about the die; it was about the do with the rest of the people in that locker room. Rutgers lost that game against the Huskies, but the message was never lost on Evans.

The world is certainly not through the pandemic, but it was in large part due to the sacrifice and dedication from Evans and her colleagues throughout the state that New Jersey is a national leader in flattening the curve.

Thriving as one of C. Vivian Stringer’s kids requires a multifaceted toughness of the mind and body. Add to that the unrelenting study habits of a public health major, and Evans’ education “On the Banks” took every ounce of discipline, time management and thick skin.

There is no class that prepares you for working in the ICU during a pandemic. There is only your response and how you move forward.

“It takes a toll on you,” she said. “It’s a huge learning curve going from standard patients to life-threatening situations with a disease you have no idea about. It’s overwhelming and super scary. But I’m a big believer in ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’ I am stronger and I can handle and tackle more things. I will be a better nurse.”

Evans plans to pursue a master’s degree in nursing as she expands in what has become a family business. Her sister is a physician’s assistant in primary care. She still picks up the rock from time to time, making her own substitutions as her knees and quads dictate. Basketball is another family business as Christa is one of four Evans sisters playing ball in college – Dani and Kimi at NJIT and Shannon at University of the Sciences in Philadelphia.

“I’m washed up, but I can still take them,” Christa let it be known with a smile, a necessary light-hearted jab amid much hardship at her place of work. 

Many have asked how she keeps showing up.