(Story courtesy of Scott Eddy, assistant athletics director for strategic communications at St. Bonaventure University and GoBonnies.com. This feature is part of the “Bonnies Baseline” series.)

For fans of the St. Bonaventure women’s basketball team, the early portion of the season has presented a learning process for a roster highlighted by a host of new faces.

Among those newcomers, guard Laycee Drake made an immediate splash as a key reason for the program’s best non-conference record in a decade.

Drake has served as a constant presence in Bona’s revival, ranking fourth among all Atlantic 10 players in scoring at over 16 points per contest through the season’s first 15 games. She’s poured in 20 or more points five times, giving SBU a dynamic scoring threat rarely seen in recent seasons.

While the Hancock, N.Y. native has impressed from the start once donning the Brown and White, she’s anything but an overnight success.

She has found a home in her fifth collegiate season after spending three years at UMBC in Baltimore and a lone year last season at Albany.

After lighting up the scoreboard at Hancock Central School during her high school career, her Division I aspirations were held back a bit by the pandemic limiting her recruiting process. She boasted gaudy high school stats but was not part of an AAU club team.

Those factors left just two Division I schools offering her a scholarship – UMBC and Fairleigh Dickinson.

The jump from playing in New York’s smallest high school classification to Division I proved a daunting one.

“There were moments of what am I doing here. We didn’t play a lot of man-to-man defense in high school. I didn’t even know how to ice a ball screen. It was a lot,” she says now, looking back with a smile. “Playing Class D in New York, the game plan was I was shooting the ball like 25, 30 times a game. The learning curve was difficult.”

Drake averaged 2.4 points and 1.7 rebounds over 20 games during her freshman season, but things started to click as a sophomore when she started all 29 games for UMBC while posting nearly eight points and four boards per contest in 2022-23.

With a breakout season seemingly on tap for Drake in the America East, the rug was pulled immediately at the outset of her junior campaign. In the season-opener vs. Towson that year, she knocked down her first two jumpers and added an assist, a steal and two blocks in just seven minutes of game action.

But, while going up for a block, she landed awkwardly and suffered a torn ACL, changing the trajectory of her basketball career.

“Rehab became basketball practice,” she said. “There was a lot of internal competition, just learning how to stand up out of a chair without using your hands again. Things like that became the goals.”

Looking for a better stylistic basketball fit to resume her career following injury, she entered the transfer portal and moved back to the Empire State with a spot at Albany.

Her Great Danes squad enjoyed a tremendous season, finishing 26-7 before falling in the America East title game.

Still slowed by the rehab process, though, the season saw a stat line of 3.3 points and 8.4 minutes per game in a reserve role for Drake.

With one more season of eligibility remaining, she hit the transfer portal again, looking to return to her small-town roots with something to prove.

“The portal is kind of like a dating app,” she said. “You have people reaching out to you left and right and you have to prioritize what you’re looking for. I knew Bonaventure was the right fit pretty quickly.”

The pieces all seemed to line up: St. Bonaventure head coach Jim Crowley previously reached out to Drake when she entered the portal the year before and she had attended one of his summer camps during his seasons at Providence. The two Central New York natives also hail from hometowns less than a half hour apart.

“She’s someone we’ve been aware of for a long time. She fits what we do and who she is fits us. We needed a veteran and our place thrives with people who are way better than others realize,” Bonnies head coach Jim Crowley said. “She has great character. That’s part of what we wanted; someone who had that resiliency and someone with something to prove. We knew we could give her that opportunity to prove it.”

The Bonnies reached out again and Drake was on campus the next day. After that visit, she knew Bonaventure was for her on the ride back home following a meeting with the Bona coaching staff.

Once enrolled at Bona’s, Drake immediately felt comfortable in the Bonnies system. Most importantly, as the season neared, she finally began to feel back to full health.

“I didn’t feel truly like myself until (this) September. It was a year and a half to get back to full strength,” she said. “When you do all the work to come back from an injury, you just want to get out there. I got to contribute in some games (last year), but it was a tough situation.”

With a 10-5 record as the calendar turns to 2026, the Bonnies eye a rise in the Atlantic 10 this season with Drake serving as one of the key components, along with fellow grad transfer Aaliyah Parker.

“Both her and Aaliyah have allowed themselves to fit in with their teammates. That’s not always easy as a grad transfer,” Crowley said. “They’re a big part of why it’s meshed so well.”

“There’s a ‘get to’ mentality rather than a ‘have to’ mentality with this team,” Drake added. “We feel like we get to spend all this time working together and we’re benefiting from that on the court.”

Through the first half of the season, she shot nearly 48 percent from the floor, easily her best career total, while her 20 3-pointers stand just four off her career-high. Her career average of just under three rebounds per game has soared to 6.5 boards per contest while she also appears primed to easily set new career bests in assists and steals as well.

Away from the court, Drake is forging a connection with the community through her student teaching. An aspiring high school English teacher, she started student teaching at Cuba-Rushford High School during the first semester and will squeeze in 70 days of student teaching around a busy basketball schedule in the second semester. Her Cuba-Rushford students could be heard cheering her on at multiple Bonnies home games already this year.

“Some of the most impactful people in my life were my high school teachers. I want to have that same impact on other people,” she said.

While a career at the head of the classroom is ahead, for now, she’s enjoying the starring role on the court that has been a long time in coming.

“The experiences the past four years shaped me. They made me confident to go out and play the way I am now,” she said. “It feels a lot better waiting four years to be that person than stepping in freshman year and being like, ‘I’ve got it.'”