For as long as Sue Wicks can remember, she felt pulled towards the water.
As a child, she was in the ocean alongside her father Bill, a bayman, as often as she was on the basketball court refining the skills that helped her become the greatest player in Rutgers women’s hoops history, a three-time All-American, one-time Naismith National Player of the Year, Women’s Basketball Hall of Famer and Rutgers’ all-time leading scorer, a career worthy of a jersey hanging from the rafters of the Rutgers Athletic Center.
As a young adult playing professional basketball in Italy, Japan, Spain, Israel, Turkey, Hungary, France and the United States, she implored her agent to find her teams in cities near a body of water. She wanted to take walks on the shore and walk by the water, its “restorative” energy breathing new life into her each time.
And after wearing a number of different hats -- serving as an assistant coach at Rutgers, co-founding an online fitness company for children named Fight 2B Fit, moving out to the West Coast for a change of scenery -- in the years since she retired from basketball, she brought it all back full circle.
Back in her hometown of Center Moriches, after undergoing a long process of applications, picking up permits, undergoing an internship and passing multiple tests, Wicks followed her father into the aquaculture business, starting an oyster farm in 2017 named Violet Cove Oysters.
“That takes up a lot of my time,” Wicks said. “In the beginning and always, I’m learning how to be an oyster farmer, improving on what I’ve learned, growing and expanding my business. I’ll get out there around 6 in the morning, i’ll head out to the farm and do whatever I need to do, be it maintenance. Then I’ll come home, make deliveries, then do it the next day.”
The oysters are a hit.
Wicks sells plenty to raw bars and wholesalers in her local area of Long Island, but they have gained traction further out. At one point, her oysters made it onto the selective menu at Le Bernardin, a French seafood restaurant in Midtown Manhattan with three Michelin stars, an honor Wicks compared to playing at Madison Square Garden.
Wicks sells directly to customers as well, a practice that grew out of necessity. When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down or significantly slowed down business to the restaurants she would usually sell her oysters to, Wicks began attending local farmers markets. Not only did it help the business, but it helped her personally during a difficult period.
“I’m into buying local, getting to know your farmer. It’s been a lot of fun being involved with that,” Wicks said. “You tell them a little story about your farm and where the fish came from. There’s a story attached to the food. They know the properties of it, the person making it and they’ll come back the next week and they’ll tell you what they made with the food. That interaction has been fabulous. It was just a sweet little experience inside of a really rough time.”
Along with returning to her roots on the Long Island waters, she is back in the gyms of the Long Island eastern shore, this time on the sidelines. Wicks is an assistant coach at her high school alma mater, coaching her niece Emily and the rest of the Red Devils.
The gig gives Wicks an excuse to occasionally get back on the court during practices and allows her to return to the same gyms she dominated as an elite high school player, but she says her playing days do not come up often.
“They know me as just their coach,” Wicks said. “When you coach kids, it’s all about them. It’s their world and you’re just coaching them and help them get better and navigate, grow as athletes and young adults. Kids don’t care at the end of the day because this is their experience and you’re guiding them through it just like my coaches guided me through mine, was there for me and focused on me. That’s a coach’s job, not to be the star and help athletes through their path.”
The high school gyms on the east end of Long Island are where Wicks spends most of her time watching sports these days.
While she keeps up with the latest scores and tunes into the occasional Rutgers and the New York Liberty games, Wicks is not one to sit down and watch every contest. She does not own a television and avoids watching passive entertainment; not news, not live sports, not the endless stream of television shows and movies released every week.
Wicks is clear she is “not above turning on my computer and watching Jerry Seinfeld on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee or Parks and Rec,” but the way she sees it, the less time she spends in front of a screen, the better.
“I’m always so amazed that there’s televisions at the deli, at the gas station, in people’s cars. Just complete engagement,” Wicks said. “I try not to be totally engaged with a digital device, even though I like it. It’s one of those things that’s a time suck and I try not to because it would steal all my time. There is fantastic entertainment, so I’m not totally down on all of it, but that passive entertainment is just not my thing and I don’t think the news is healthy for any person. I try to read more and do things.”
At the top of that list of things: spending time by the waters of Long Island, whether that is farming for oysters or taking the walks that give her life.
“It’s just magical, a lovely place to sit and restore yourself,” Wicks said. “I love the ocean, I love the water and I’m so happy to walk by the ocean on Long Island. It’s magic for me.”
Other “Where are they now?” stories on former Rutgers Athletes:
Former Rutgers men’s basketball forward Eric Clark
Former Rutgers men’s basketball center Rashod Kent
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Brian Fonseca may be reached at bfonseca@njadvancemedia.com.