“I tend to get frustrated a lot,” Sumayah Sugapong, five-time Big West Player of the Week, acknowledged, a couple weeks after she announced her transfer to the University of Arizona.
From the very start, the hometown point guard has been one of the surest sources of frustration for schools on UC San Diego’s schedule. Two years ago, as a freshman, she led the women’s basketball team in scoring average, and this past season, set the new single game steals record. The tendency toward frustration is still there, but to Sugapong, basketball is well worth it.
She tried soccer as a kid, but it was when she found basketball with her friend Naomi Panganiban, her future high school and Philippines national team teammate, that the future began aligning for Sugapong.
A current Sixth College sophomore, Sugapong is transferring to Arizona at the end of this year, leaving behind one of the more mystifying legacies in UCSD women’s basketball history. She never missed a game, was never afraid to shoot, and, of course, will forever be remembered for banking in the game-winning layup in the conference semifinals that propelled the Tritons to their first Big West Championship.
She was named to the All-Big West First Team and Most Outstanding Player of the Big West Championship and leaves La Jolla with her best basketball years ahead of her, marking a wistful but hardly unexpected ending to her UCSD athletic career. Her vision, after all, had long been to play for a Power 4 school.
“You can sort of outgrow an environment you’re in,” she said, repeating advice she received when deciding where the portal would take her. “I fully believe I could be playing at a higher level.” While in the portal, she was open to the idea of staying at UCSD. “I didn’t go into the portal looking for more, I just wanted to play the best girls in the country,” she said.
Considering Sugapong has landed herself on opposing Power 4 nightmare matchup lists, understanding how she got there takes a short drive from campus and a few years back to find the greatest and, perhaps, unluckiest girls’ prep basketball team of all time. When she was in ninth grade, Sugapong and La Jolla Country Day went 32-1 on the way to the state championship game, only to find it canceled due to the pandemic. At Country Day, she played alongside talented players such as Breya Cunningham, future NCAA champion Te-Hina Paopao, and Jada Williams, and resultantly, flew under the radar of many college programs to the point that when her recruitment came around, Sugapong watched as her teammates fielded offer upon offer, some netting “30 plus,” while she went home to none of her own. She ultimately decided on the school down the street and doesn’t regret it.
“I’d do it the same way,” Sugapong said about choosing UCSD. “[It] taught me a lot of valuable things, [to] finally be at the level I wanted to, with two years of experience.”
Once a Triton, she garnered early accolades with help from junior teammates she lived with during her freshman year. Sugapong’s housemates helped her adjust to college, sign up for classes, and after practices, they would unwind and decompress over Fortnite matches.
“I wouldn’t have made it through the year without them,” she said.
On the court, she concentrated on learning different abilities and observing others to improve her game.
“I’ve taken a move or two [from my teammates],” Sugapong said. “Playing ones, they hit a nice shot, [it’s] definitely cool to be able to learn from each other. Basketball brings work ethic to another level. You practice two, three hours, then there’s other hours going back to the gym later to get more work in. It’s good when you have hardworking teammates. I don’t want her to take my spot.”
Arizona Wildcat players might be interested to learn that one of their new teammates can show up on game day on no water and an empty stomach and still dominate.
Midway through the 1990s, in observance of Ramadan, Houston Rockets center Hakeem Olajuwon began fasting on NBA game days. On the second day of February 1995, Olajuwon ate no food, drank no water, then dropped 41 points on the Utah Jazz.
“To be able to play like that without water for the whole game, it’s one of the most amazing things I’ve seen in my life,” teammate Charles Barkley later remarked.
“[It’s an] advantage,” agreed Sugapong, who also fasts for Ramadan. From an uninformed perspective, it’s a commitment that is detrimental to a player’s physical and intellectual vigor on game nights. Sugapong is quick to dismiss such notions.
“[It’s] definitely hard to do,” she said. “No eating or drinking. … You’d think you have no energy, [but] that’s kind of the beauty of it. [It’s] good for your mental strength, being mentally tough, more locked in when I’m fasting.”
So locked in was coach Heidi VanderVeer’s 2024-25 roster that even after a dreadful 1-7 start, the Tritons rallied to win the conference, drawing 48 minutes away from March Madness in their first year of eligibility. Sugapong remembered how arriving on a national stage brought a sense of “shock,” considering the magnitude of the historic moment for the University.
“Like, we’re really going to this tournament, people watch this on their TV, we’re going to March Madness,” she reflected. “Once we got up to UCLA, we were watching film on the other team and all that. … I definitely felt like we belonged there.”
UCSD fell at Pauley Pavilion, 68-56, but the experience provided an opportunity for school alumni to share how inspiring the team’s trailblazing journey had been for a great number of supporters.
“On our coaching staff, we had an alum, [and] she was telling us how proud of us she was,” recalled Sugapong. “[An] old coach from my freshman year drove up to UCLA to watch our First Four game — alum as well.”
Even though her final game in a Triton uniform ended in a loss, Sugapong is committed to “going back and supporting UCSD basketball.” For her, and Arizona, who once landed both Williams and Cunningham, the timing is working out.
“I think it would be good for me to get out of San Diego a little bit,” she said. “I think it’ll be good for me.”
She will miss certain things about living in San Diego, like “the weather, and being comfortable” in a place she has been her entire life. “[I’m] definitely a little bit nervous,” she said.
The distance between family will be an adjustment, too. “My grandparents talked to me,” she said, “[like] ‘We’re sad we can’t watch your games anymore.’” As far as the UCSD community goes, so are we.
