Taya Reimer leaves Notre Dame women's hoops for season
SOUTH BEND — It is possible the Notre Dame women’s basketball team has seen the last of junior captain Taya Reimer.
The 6-foot-3 Reimer, who missed two games last season for personal reasons but was welcomed back by Coach Muffet McGraw, has left the team again — this time for the rest of this season.
In a pre-game radio interview on Pulse FM, McGraw told broadcaster Bob Nagle that Reimer, a former McDonald's All-American, “remains a student athlete in good standing and on scholarship at Notre Dame.”
Responding to a text from the Tribune, McGraw wrote, “It is personal reasons. She plans to stay in school and not play.”
That, of course, leaves the door open for conjecture for next season.
Will Reimer return? Will she transfer to play elsewhere? There may not be an answer to that at this time, but the immediate future seems clear.
When asked for more information regarding the situation, Notre Dame Assistant Media Relations Director Chris Masters said no more news about Reimer is imminent.
“It’s not likely her status will change before the end of the season,” he said.
Reimer, who was selected the 2013 Morgan Wootten National Player of the Year as a high school senior, played well after missing those two games last December.
She was a factor in the Irish winning the Atlantic Coast Conference championship and during their run to a fifth straight Final Four appearance. But she injured her Achilles heel late in the season and aggravated it again during the summer when she was part of the silver-medal winning USA team at the Pan Am Games.
Reimer did not make the trip when the Irish defeated Texas Christian Saturday in Fort Worth, and had played in only six games this season, seeing just 93 minutes on the court. She was averaging 5.8 points and 3.2 rebounds in her brief action. Her playing status was deemed day-to-day depending upon how much pain she could tolerate in her Achilles.
Ali Patberg is out with a season-ending knee injury, Brianna Turner is sidelined at least temporarily with a shoulder injury and Diamond Thompson remained on campus Saturday with an illness. Notre Dame suited up only nine players for the contest Saturday with the Horned Frogs.
Could this be a red-shirt season for Reimer?
“Notre Dame doesn’t determine such things (redshirt possibilities) until after student athletes complete four years of undergraduate work,” Masters said.
A McDonald’s All-American at Hamilton Southeastern High School in Fishers, Ind., after her senior year in high school, Reimer averaged 7.4 points and 4.6 rebounds as a freshman at Notre Dame. Last year as a sophomore her numbers climbed to 10.2 points and 6.1 rebounds.
