Basketball practice. Calculus II homework. Early-morning shootarounds. Late-night study sessions for physics. Seven p.m. tip-offs. Computer science assignments.
It’s all part of another week in the life of LSU sophomore guard Raigyne Moncrief.
As an electrical engineering major, Moncrief has much more on her plate than scoring points and locking down opponents at the PMAC.
In a field as demanding as engineering, Moncrief spends as much of her time poring over the intricacies of an electronic circuit and its various components as she does working on her jumper in the Lady Tigers’ practice facility.
While Moncrief shares a common love for basketball with her teammates, engineering terms such as “AND gate” and “OR gate” go right over their heads.
“I couldn’t comprehend it if she tried to explain it to me,” said LSU junior forward Ann Jones. “I think she just leaves that in the classroom.”
Moncrief discovered her fascination for engineering before she even arrived on campus.
“We were doing circuits my junior year in high school and messing with wires and resistors and learning how to use AND gates and OR gates, and I just fell in love with it,” Moncrief said. “I stuck with it in high school and came to college and tried to stay with it.”
When she chose to pursue electrical engineering at LSU, Moncrief’s mother, Veronica, said she never questioned whether her daughter could handle the heavy school load along with being a Division I athlete.
“On and off the court, Raigyne’s a perfectionist,” Veronica said. “She’s a problem solver, so I believed engineering would be a great career for her. She loves math and science, so even after basketball, I wanted her in a career that she’d enjoy.”
The Southeastern Conference took notice of Raigyne work in the classroom, naming her to the 2013-14 SEC First-Year Academic Honor Roll. She was one of two electrical engineer majors among the 820-student honor roll.
But Raigyne said her early scholastic success stemmed as much from the work she put in as from her brains.
“You have to make time for it, period,” Raigyne said. “You have practice, then right after practice, you get showered up and try to do your homework and get everything done. I call them ‘gimmes.’ Any assignment or project you can finish just in case you don’t do well on the test, those could help you out. You have to make time for it.”
However, school didn’t always come easy for the Florida native, who graduated from American Heritage High School with a 4.0-plus GPA on top of being ESPN’s 18th-ranked player in the 2013 class.
Veronica and her husband, Reginald, can still recall a much younger Raigyne struggling with her school work and in jeopardy of not passing the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.
But Raigyne has made those early struggles seem like a distant memory.
“She was in danger of not passing the FCAT, but we haven’t had that problem since,” Reginald said. “She’s been striving in school just like she does on the basketball court. She fights through everything, so I had no doubt when she came here if she wanted to be an engineer, she’d be an engineer.”
Though her parents believed she could do it, others didn’t, and their doubts have served as a motivational tool for Raigyne.
“It’s hard, but I think since it’s hard is why I keep pushing for it,” she said. “Some people say it’s impossible, so it makes me want to keep going for it because it’s a harder major.”
But above all else, Raigyne wants to be an engineer for the same reason she plays basketball — it’s simply something she enjoys.
“When you see wires all over the place and you press the circuit and it works, it’s the best feelings for me,” Raigyne said.
You can reach David Gray on Twitter @dgray_TDR.