Basketball Preview: ‘Bubbly’ 6-foot-11 freshman from Jamaica will redshirt

Marvadene Anderson has a round face that she frames with straight hair. Her soft eyes are open and alert, and when she laughs, they sparkle with the same brilliance as her smile.

Like most girls her age, she likes shoe shopping, and she has a playful personality that resonates throughout a room.

But Anderson, 19, isn’t like most girls her age.

Standing at 6-foot-11, she’s the tallest teenage girl in the world and the newest member of Pitt’s struggling women’s basketball team. When she is ready to take the court, Anderson will play center.

Pitt women’s basketball head coach Agnus Berenato has high hopes for Anderson because of her exceptional height.

“She’s the only one in the world right now. We have something special,” she said.

Marvadene “Bubbles” Anderson has a presence that exceeds even her height in size, giving her a larger-than-life appearance in all aspects. But despite the reputation that comes with being an almost 7-foot-tall woman, she still encounters the same obstacles any other college freshman would: homesickness, tiny dorm rooms and the challenge of acting in skits for her Introduction to Performance class.

Born in Jamaica on May 1, 1993, Anderson said she was raised in a happy home. She lived with her mother, Dianne Stewart, and her 22-year-old sister Kimberly. Anderson said people who knew her family often noted they had remarkably similar personality traits.

“We’re all similar,” she said. “People say me, my mom and my sister all act like sisters, because growing up it was always me, my mom and my sister.”

Her nickname has been attributed to her for as long as she can remember.

“I’ve had this nickname since I was a kid,” she said, blaming her mother for the substitution, “because of my bubbly personality.”

Garet Anderson, Anderson’s father, left Jamaica when she was 6 years old to work in England, where there were more job opportunities that would pay enough to support the family.

But Anderson insists her family found happiness, regardless.

“My family, we’re really simple, and we’re happy,” she said in her distinct Jamaican accent.

Growing up, Anderson knew almost immediately that her height separated her from the crowd — if only because of the several inches she had over her classmates as early as her preschool years.

“I realized I was taller than most people since preschool. I was always the tallest one in my class,” she said.

In first grade, Anderson was already taller than 5 feet and stood head-to-head with her teacher.

Before coming to the United States, Anderson attended Edwin Allen Comprehensive High School in Jamaica, where she played netball — a popular game in the Caribbean (only played professionally by women) that involves seven players on two teams attempting to shoot a ball into raised baskets without a backboard.

But Anderson’s remarkable height and outgoing personality suggested that she had a destiny off her island homeland.

At the age of 16, she moved from Jamaica to the United States to attend Rutgers Preparatory School in Somerset, N.J., where she completed her final years of high school and began her basketball career under head coach Mary Klinger, the twin sister of Pitt women’s basketball associate head coach Patty Coyle.

Despite limited experience playing the game, Anderson averaged 21.2 points and 5.8 rebounds as a senior. She was named a Courier News First Team All-Area selection twice, and she won Most Valuable Player in the Somerset County Tournament — her most gratifying moment as a basketball player.

Because of her height and stature, colleges began to notice Anderson as a serious prospect. During her senior year, she began looking at American universities — a huge achievement for the Jamaican native, considering she is the first of her family to attend a university.

“My height got me to college. I’m the first one in my family who got to go to college,” she said.

Berenato said that she learned of Anderson through Coyle.

“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s this 6-foot-10 girl transferring from Jamaica to Rutgers Prep.’ I immediately went up to see this kid,” the 10th-year head coach said.

But even with Anderson’s rare height, Berenato and the coaching staff decided that Anderson will redshirt, or sit out, this year to get acclimated to the college game. She will continue to practice with the team and do the same workouts and exercises as it does, but for her first year, she won’t play.

“This will give her a great opportunity to go ahead and work with her body,” Berenato said.

And Anderson agrees. Because she is still familiarizing herself with the game, she believes she has “so much to learn.”

“Taking a year to learn and develop and to get better, it’s not bad,” she said. “It’s a really smart idea, because a lot is expected of me, and I need to know what I’m doing before I step out on the court.”

Schools such as Memphis, South Florida, Rutgers, Miami (Fla.), Hofstra and Arkansas, as well as Pitt, all tried to recruit Anderson to play for their basketball programs. But after many visits and some consideration, she chose Pitt because of the close relationship she felt between the coaches and players.

“I visited a few schools, and on my official visit here, I met the coaches, the staff, the team, the girls,” Anderson explained, saying that team cohesion was one of the most important factors that went into her decision. “It’s like a family unit.”

Berenato tries to extend this familial atmosphere by giving her a “little bit of home,” inviting Anderson to her house and making home-cooked dinners of the freshman’s favorite food.

“I think that it’s so different for her being in America and in college. And she’s so grateful,” Berenato said.

Teammate and friend Chyna Golden, a sophomore forward, agrees with Berenato that the adjustment must be especially difficult for Anderson, since she is so far from her home.

“I’m only five or six hours away, and I still miss home,” Golden said. “At the beginning, she was really missing it. But being around each other and being together, [the team is] like a mini-family.”

One of Anderson’s most difficult realizations has been that her family has never seen her play basketball.

“That’s a big difference from me and every one of my teammates,” she said. “It makes me feel sad sometimes. I look in the stands and see my teammates’ family members in the stands.”

But she doesn’t let that get her upset.

“I came here, and I met a lot of great people and people who want the best for me, and I appreciate that,” she said.

As for most new students, freshman year has proved difficult for Anderson. She’s taking five courses, including Public Speaking and Introduction to Performance, in which she performed her first skit, acting as a sarcastic doctor who waited a long time for her patient.

Like other freshman students, Anderson is working to become more acclimated to the University, but because of her move from Jamaica two years ago, the transfer to Pitt is an adjustment that she has some experience in making.

“I have to adjust a lot. But, you know, it’s a different culture, and life is all about adjustment,” Anderson said.

Still, the tight dimensions of her dorm and bathroom, where she squeezes to fit in the shower, cause her some inconvenience. Anderson sleeps on an extra long bed to make her nightly slumbers less cramped.

“But I’m comfortable. I’m feeling happy here,” she said.

Anderson’s height makes her one of the most noticeable students on campus, and because of her interview on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in 2010 — yes, Anderson was an interviewed guest on the popular television show — people often recognize her on the street. And though some of this unwanted attention can be annoying, Anderson tries to make light of the situation.

“Sometimes I go out and people are like, ‘Are you the tall girl I see on TV that’s from Jamaica?’ And I’m just like, ‘What are you talking about?’” Anderson joked. “I play with them.”

And if she’s wearing her basketball sweats when someone asks who she is, Anderson chooses another sport to represent. Instead of confirming their suspicions, she tells curious bystanders she’s a tennis player.

Even before she steps on the court to play for Pitt, Anderson hopes her future includes basketball even after college. She plans on studying broadcasting and communications, and after she graduates, she wants to play professional basketball and help her family emigrate to the United States.

“I would love to play basketball after college and get my family out of there from the struggle,” she said.

Until then, Anderson will continue to work hard to make that future a possibility.

And in the meantime, despite her height, she will wear her pair of two-inch heels, ignore any negative comments and — as her personal motto suggests — “keep it going.”