LaMonica Plater on the growing popularity of women’s basketball, playing overseas & giving back

SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – A Shreveport native playing professional basketball in Eurobasket, a European basketball league, returned home at the end of the season to talk about her youth camp, the adjustment of playing overseas, and the newfound popularity of women’s basketball in America.

LaMonica “Noodle” Plater is a graduate of Woodlawn High and Grambling State University and has played organized basketball for as long as she can remember. On Saturday, July 12, Plater hosted her camp in partnership with SPAR for the second consecutive year. She said the expansive basketball community in Shreveport has not only pushed her to start the camp but also supports her by showing up and helping teach and coach.

Plater said, “Knowing a lot of, basketball players, a lot of coaches, reaching out to them, asking them, would it be okay for them to come in and help me? And with them being open to it right then and there, I just knew it was the right thing to do.”

During the camp, youths aged 7-17 were gathered at Woodlawn to learn basketball fundamentals, including dribbling, passing, shooting, and defending. Camp participants were grouped by age and received coaching from male and female mentors with varying levels of game knowledge.

Basketball supersedes cultural differences when playing overseas

Plater is Louisiana through and through, and if you’ve never left your home state for more than a vacation, the transition to a new country with an unfamiliar language and food would be hard, but she said her “foreign family,” as she calls them, could not have made the transition nearly seamless.

“When I made it there, my coach picked me up from the airport, and right there, I knew he was family because he helped me, like, he helped me get the jitters out and talked to me about the different teammates I’m going to meet. The ones that are younger than me, the ones that are older than me, and it was just an amazing experience.”

Although adjusting to the food in Eastern Europe took some getting used to, she eventually ventured away from her daily doses of pizza and adjusted to the cuisine in her home away from home. She describes her overall experience as great and credits her time as a college player with helping prepare her to be a leader on the team.

Women’s basketball’s growing popularity in the U.S.

While women’s basketball has been popular throughout Europe and China for many years, as evidenced by American players who happily accept offers to play abroad for better pay, it seems that U.S. sports fans have only taken notice of women’s skills on the court within the last five years.

Southwood graduate Alana Beard was named to the WNBA 2025 Hall of Fame Class, and another league great, Vickie Johnson, will join Beard in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame so greatness has always been there but for a variety of reasons the W as it is now calling itself has mainly gone ignore until now.

As Plater said she hasn’t been called up to the WNBA – yet- but she seems hopeful that one day she will play for fans in her home country. Her stats and physical play would be an asset to any team in the league. Although she is excited about the newfound attention given to women’s basketball, she was quick to note that women didn’t just start balling – sports fans have just been slow to recognize the league’s competitiveness.

“So the hype is very much, needed, but I can I can honestly say for the people that have been watching basketball and they have, played basketball for a long time, we we were already like that,” Plater said. “Seeing different players, evolve and and, you know, average double doubles and in these accolades, where we were used to seeing that. So as far as the world being involved now is it’s kind of like a 50/50 thing, like, oh, okay. They’re finally on track now. They’re catching up now.”