BLOOMINGTON — Indiana women’s basketball players at the end of the bench jumped up to their feet once the ball went inside to Sydney Fenn at Assembly Hall on Tuesday night.
Fenn paused a beat under the basket once she realized there was no one in her vicinity. This was her moment and she didn’t let it go to waste by dropping in a layup off the glass for the first points of her college career.
The Hoosiers (1-0) celebrated like she had just hit a game-winner in the Big Ten championship game.
“I am just beyond happy for her,” Lenee Beaumont said after a 79-50 win over FGCU.
Fenn’s debut had been a long time coming.
In 2024-25, the true freshman missed the entire season thanks to a knee injury and she repeated the next year. Same procedure, same knee.
“That was my rehab buddy when I was out,” Beaumont said. “It’s so easy to feel isolated and kind of remove yourself from the team environment, but she has been a phenomenal teammate, she has been the loudest voice, and I think all of us can agree to that.”
They returned the favor on Tuesday night.
The Assembly Hall crowd of 5,921 fans showed how much they appreciated Fenn’s efforts as well. She got a healthy round of applause when she ran up to the scorer’s table with less than four minutes to go in the fourth quarter and her lone basket got the biggest cheer of the night.
Fenn’s parents, who flew in from Arizona, were among the fans in attendance.
“I think the other special part of this is that her parents are here from Arizona,” IU coach Teri Moren said. “And we got to see her for the first time in Simon Scott Assembly Hall, which is always special.”
Moren expanded on Beaumont’s comment about Fenn’s positive attitude behind the scenes under the most challenging of circumstances.
“She’s constantly in practice bringing energy and cheering for her team, and she’s the loudest one over there also on the bench,” Moren said. “She hasn’t wavered in terms of her cheering on her teammates, which has been really great and something that I know from our coaches we really appreciate.”
Michael Niziolek is the Indiana beat reporter for The Bloomington Herald-Times. You can follow him on X @michaelniziolek.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Indiana women’s basketball forward Sydney Fenn makes emotional college debut
