By Harry Minium
NORFOLK, Va. – DeLisha Milton-Jones already had an alpha female on her Old Dominion women's basketball team.
Ajah Wayne, a 5-foot-10 guard from Birmingham, Alabama, carried the Monarchs to a near miraculous postseason run last season. She averaged 22.5 points and 11 rebounds as the Monarchs won three games in three days before losing to Rice, 62-60, in the Conference USA semifinals.
But then Iggy Allen, another alpha female, the C-USA Newcomer of the Year at Florida Atlantic, and a first team all-league and all-defensive team choice, entered the transfer portal last spring.
Milton-Jones approached Wayne, and after some long discussions, Wayne said she was fine with Allen joining the team. Then Milton-Jones wooed Allen to ODU, beating Power 5 schools such as Baylor and Rutgers.
"Iggy and Ajah, these young ladies are bulls," she said. "I wondered how I was going to get them to see they have a lot of similarities. They needed to work together. They needed to accept each other."
Simple, she said. "I told them they are rooming together," she said.
It didn't take long for them to figure out they do have a lot in common. They've become good friends. Both have seen their scoring averages fall from last season, and that's OK, they say. That's the price you pay when two scorers are on the same team, and you win.
Both grew up under less-than-ideal circumstances. Allen was raised by a single mom in a blue-collar neighborhood in Pompano Beach, Florida. Her neighborhood was relatively safe, but she lost a friend to gun violence while in high school.
And her father has been in prison since she was a small child.
Wayne grew up, well, all over Birmingham. Her parents moved around a lot because they couldn't always pay the bills. She lost two close friends to gun violence, including a UAB student who was approaching graduation.
"She was a straight-A student who was just at the wrong place at the wrong time."
"We were able to play outside when I was younger, but then it got to the point where it wasn't safe to be outside.
"It became what it is now, which is not safe at all. When I go home now, I have to be careful. I can't be out at all times of the night."
Wayne and Allen grew close as they shared stories of their upbringing, shopped together, cooked together and practiced and played together. And they've led ODU to what could be a breakthrough season.
ODU (22-6, 12-4 C-USA) hosts LA Tech (17-10, 9-7) tonight at 6:30 in the Monarchs' final home game of the season. If ODU wins tonight and Saturday at Middle Tennessee, the Monarchs will finish at least second in the C-USA East Division and clinch a bye into the quarterfinals of next week's tournament in Frisco, Texas.
Then, the Monarchs aim to win three games in three days and go dancing in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2008.
Victories in the next two games would also give ODU its best record since 2019-20, when Nikki McCray-Penson coached her third and last season with the Monarchs. ODU's postseason was ended abruptly by the pandemic as ODU was preparing for its first round C-USA tournament game.
Wayne played on that team, which finished 24-6.
"That was a very hurtful way to end the season," she said.
Allen and Wayne have shared the load for ODU this season. Allen averages 15 points, 7.7 rebounds and 1.6 assists per game while Wayne checks in at 13.5 points, six rebounds and 1.7 assists. Both average more than 30 minutes per game.
Both surely would have better numbers if the team only had one alpha female, but they both say, winning matters much more.
"I haven't ever played on a team with this type of unity, with this type of talent," said Allen, who played at Mississippi State and Miami (Fla.) before transferring to FAU.
"No one tries to stand out. No one is bigger than the team.
"I told our team before the season that we can make it to the Top 25, that we can go to the dance and make some noise.
"I still believe we can."
Allen came to ODU with something of a bad rap. She is an intense player and a superb athlete. Although she's just 5-11, she is muscular, fast and aggressive.
Sometimes hyper aggressive.
Milton-Jones was disliked by many opponents in the WNBA because of her aggressiveness – her nickname was D-Nasty. Allen plays with the same intensity.
"When I started having conversations with her, I said, 'Is this the same person who is a monster on the court?'" Milton-Jones said. "What a sweet spirit. Her intentions are always good.
"It's easy to misunderstand someone like her, especially when she's so driven."
At first, Wayne wasn't sure about Allen, either.
"When she first came here, I said, 'Coach, are you sure?' She told me that I just have to get to know her," Wayne said.
"I remembered playing against her last year and I said, 'this girl is crazy.'"
She has a much different perspective after rooming with Allen.
"Iggy is very misunderstood. She's the goofiest person on the team, always laughing and joking," Wayne said. "She's mean on the court. Off the court, she's a sweet person."
That surely comes across on social media, where Allen has built a loyal following. Several years ago, Allen downloaded Instagram on her phone just to check it out.
Intrigued, she did a quick video and posted it. "I was just dancing," she said. "And it had 800 views the first day.
"I checked on it a week later and it had 8,000 views. I said to myself, 'OK, I'm pretty good at this.'"
She is. She has more than 7,000 Instagram followers and thousands more on TikTok, and some of her videos have been viewed more than 20,000 times. She comes across as funny and sensitive yet also serious.
She likes to do videos by herself and will often play two roles. Wearing a head wrap, and her ever-present nose ring, Allen did a recent video in an ODU parking lot.
"Are you into astrology?" she asks looking to the left, as upbeat music plays.
Then the camera cuts to her looking to the right and she says, "why yes."
"What sign are you?"
"Scorpio."
Then the music changes to something depressing and the camera cuts to Iggy, whose face is quivering, and tears roll down her cheeks as a broken heart emerges on the screen.
She's something of an astrology expert, so we must assume that being a Scorpio isn't good.
She often wears wigs and plays a mother and daughter fighting or a mother teaching her teenager how to drive. She mimics music videos, viral news clips and often does comedy routines, mouthing a recording.
She has done a video with a cat on her head, did one running and jumping over a chair with high-heel boots on and several with green liquid mask plastered all over her face.
When she was in South Florida, she would pretend to be a news reporter. Her mother, Susan Anthony, says that when she played those videos out loud, "people asked me what news station I was listening to."
"My videos reflect who I am as a person. Fun, lively, enthusiastic, charismatic," Allen said.
"I try to be as transparent as I can. I say, 'I hope you have a good day. I hope you smile today.'
"I hope people smile when they see my videos, that they draw some joy from them."
That sense of caring and joy comes from her mother, who had seven sisters and three brothers, none of whom graduated from college. She was determined her children, Iggy and Alecia, would get college degrees, so she bought a house in a decent neighborhood and gave her daughters tough love while also showing compassion for others.
Often, when they drove to the local Wal-Mart to go grocery shopping, she would stop and give homeless people a few dollars or a fast-food meal.
"My mother is a single, hard-working mother," Allen said. "Because she works so hard, she hasn't been able to make a lot of my games. But I could always call her and ask her for advice.
Yet Allen said "If I'm feeling down, she's not going to rub my back. It's not that kind of conversation.
"She has always told me like it is, that I need to get back in there and fight. I always wanted to hear what I needed to hear, not what someone thinks I wanted to hear."
Anthony said Iggy has missed her father.
"It was very hard for all of us," she said, when he went to prison. "Iggy was five when he left, and he left on her birthday.
"He loves her. But she's 23 years old and her dad should have been with her, should have been on her college visits. He should be sitting in the stands. I've had to work at night to make extra money.
"He sees his daughter on television, but he can't be there. Iggy always tells me I'm the mom and the dad. She wishes me happy Father's Day on Father's Day."
Anthony grew up with her father and mother, but said they struggled to make ends meet.
"I saw how my mom struggled and I learned from that," she said. "I do everything for my kids.
"I loved them very much and have tried to make things as hard for them as it was for me."
Alecia Allen is a college graduate and a personal trainer who will enter physical therapy school in the fall. Iggy Allen has a degree from Miami and is finishing up work on a master's degree at ODU.
They are first-gen students – the first in their family to graduate from college
"I raised my kids to love people, no matter what color they are," Anthony said. "And I'm so proud of them."
Both Allen and Wayne began playing basketball with the help of coaches who saw talent in them before they even knew how to dribble.
Wayne began playing basketball in the fifth grade, but had it not been for a community league coach named Blake Franklin, she might not have ever picked up a basketball.
"There was this man who would sit outside of the neighborhood gym and would say, 'come work out with me in the gym.'
"But I mean, he was this random guy, so I would ignore him."
Eventually, she took up his offer. "I was so horrible. I couldn't even dribble down the court," she said.
"But coach Franklin, that's what I call him, he saw potential in me. We started working out every day, even on weekends. I would not be where I am without him."
Franklin indeed had a keen eye for talent. Wayne was part of two high school state championship teams and was twice named MVP in the state championship game. As a senior, she was named the 6A State Player of the Year.
"Ever since the fifth grade, he hasn't left my side," she said. "When I go home, I work out at the same old rec gym with him.
"I communicate with him almost every day. He's like my second father."
Her father, Prentice Wayne, is in poor health. He had a heart attack about a year ago and is being treated for lung cancer. Her mother has struggled to make ends meet.
"I had to grow up at an early age," she said.
It's hard being so far away from home. I worry about him. But at the end of the day, you have to let grown ups be grown ups.
"I try to be the best role model I can be for my sisters."
One sister is in college while the other is living with godparents in Maryland, and she's proud of them both. "My sister in Maryland had a 4.3 grade point average last semester," she said.
Allen didn't start playing basketball until she was in the eighth grade. She was a rough-and-tumble tom boy who played football in the streets, sometimes sans shoes.
"I thought basketball was a stupid game," she said. "I wanted to play football."
Then, she learned that there are no rec football leagues nor school football leagues for girls. "That made me so mad," she said.
Her sister was playing basketball and so, in the summer before she entered the ninth grade, she began to learn the game, often by herself.
"I spent the entire summer dribbling the basketball in the middle of a high school court with a blind fold on and nobody there," she said. She caught the eye of her sister's high school coach.
The coach gave her a nickname. Her teammates wanted to call her "prodigy," but he said she hadn't earned that and said her nickname for now is "igy."
"I added the extra g for spice," she said.
Wayne's off the court talent is a little more practical than doing videos. She didn't have a lot of money growing up, so when she was a young teenager, she started watching videos on how to do hair and makeup. She then practiced on her sisters and friends.
Talk about an entrepreneur.
"I did peoples' hair as a side hustle," she said.
Now she's turned it into a business of sorts. She colors, cuts, shapes and braids hair of all of her teammates. When the Monarchs run onto the court, you can bet that everyone's hair was done by Wayne.
Her teammates get discounts. "I don't charge them full price because I know how difficult it can be to make it as a college student," she said.
But athletes on other teams, including half a dozen football players, do pay full price. When asked the names of football players whose hair she does, she smiled and said, "no comment. I don't think they would want people to know."
"Weezy is amazing," Milton-Jones said, using Wayne's nickname. "She does beautiful hair. You name the style and she can do it.
"She's been taking care of herself since she was 18."
Allen is a senior with no more eligibility and said she has only one goal – to play in the WNBA.
Milton-Jones said she has a good shot at playing professionally, in Europe if not in the WNBA.
"She's a two-way player," Milton-Jones said. "And they don't make many two-way players."
Wayne is a smart and gifted basketball player who has a knack for finding a way to put the ball in the basket when faced by a taller player. She can run the point, post up and make three-point shots.
But her knees likely will prevent her from attempting to go pro. She had knee surgery in high school.
Wayne is also a senior but could elect to return because the NCAA gave all players an extra season of eligibility because of COVID. And for now, at least, that's her plan.
"I'm planning to come back," she said. She has an internship to complete with the Norfolk Police to finish work on her degree in cybersecurity.
And like Allen and her sister, she will become a first-gen student.
She wants to begin work on her master's in public administration next season. Her ultimate goal is to become a U.S. Marshall, and she may join the military after finishing her master's to get a leg up.
"Your chances of getting into the U.S. Marshalls is much better if you're in the military," she said.
She said she was always intrigued with shows about law enforcement when she was growing up, and in part is motivated to go into that field because of the crime she saw in Birmingham.
"It just seems like a cool job to be in the U.S. Marshalls," she said. "I don't want a job where I'm doing the same thing every day. I want to do something different every day."
But she also wants to help affect positive change. Relations between police officers and African Americans are often strained. She recalls being treated poorly by police officers in Birmingham.
Once, an officer came racing down her neighborhood street and yelled at the kids to get out of the road. They were playing basketball on a goal in her driveway.
"He was being disrespectful," she said. "I hated it. If you see a police officer coming, you might turn away from him, even though you aren't doing anything wrong.
"And it shouldn't be that way."
She reacted by reaching out to police officers on the streets in Birmingham and began a dialogue. She's still in touch with several of them. She has also befriended half a dozen ODU campus police officers.
"A lot of people don't like police officers," she said. "But if you don't change things, if the people don't change, people will continue not to respect the police.
"I'm going to try to make a change while doing something I think would be fun."
Wayne has the right personality for law enforcement. She has a gentle, laid-back way about her, and her distinctive Alabama drawl brings a smile to your face.
People are drawn to her by her friendly smile.
"Yeah, my teammates all call me country," she said. "When we went to play UAB the first time, they all said, 'Hey, where are the cows and horses. This ain't the country.'
"They often tell me to repeat myself."
And she's unselfish. Milton-Jones said had Wayne objected to her recruiting Allen, she likely would have backed off in the name of team chemistry.
"Weezy is all about the team and not about herself," Milton-Jones said.
Wayne said she's grateful to Allen for joining the team.
"People think it was a sacrifice but for me, it was more of a relief," she said. "Last year there was so much pressure, I had to work so hard, that I was always in pain.
"I'm glad she came here. I've made a good friend."
And perhaps they will go dancing together.
Minium: Ajah Wayne, Iggy Allen Are the Alpha Females for ODU Women's Basketball
