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There are butterflies in Gwen Hawkins’ stomach. She can’t escape the anxious buzz of anticipation as she helps her youngest daughter, Shy Hawkins, pack her belongings.

It’s July 2024, and Shy’s preparing to leave Mastic Beach, her tiny Long Island hamlet, for Syracuse. She’s accompanied by her parents — Gwen and Patrick Hawkins — and a whole lot of butterflies.

Five hours and a little over 300 miles later, the family enters Shy’s apartment. They’re the first ones there, so Shy gets to pick her room.

Eventually, Shy’s new roommates — Olivia Schmitt and Keira Scott — arrive, while Patrick’s putting together shelves. Gwen adjusts Shy’s comforter, making sure her pillows are perfectly placed for a sumptuous night of rest. Gwen won’t have that same luxury tonight. Soon, she and Patrick will leave for the night, sleep in a hotel and, eventually, return to Mastic Beach. For the first time, Shy won’t be with them when they depart.

“I still always have butterflies in my stomach when I have to leave,” Gwen says.

Sending their last child to college was a new challenge for Patrick and Gwen. But SU was a new challenge for Shy, too. Shy overcame a late start to basketball to become a consensus four-star prospect in the class of 2024. She was always a quick learner, and in Mastic Beach, she was almost always her teams’ best player.

That changed at Syracuse. Patrick said it often — that these are just the same girls Shy had been playing with throughout high school — but she knew something had changed. It was a different level entirely. Shy played a bench role last season, starting one of her 27 games as a freshman, and struggled with confidence throughout.

But she’s finally adapted to college this season. In their reinvigorating 21-win season, the Orange have relied on four penciled-in starters: Dominique Darius, Laila Phelia, Sophie Burrows and Uche Izoje. The fifth has been a revolving door, yet with 15 starts in 26 games, Shy essentially made the spot hers.

Shy Hawkins releases a shot in Syracuse’s 68-64 win over Clemson. Thus far, Shy has started 15 of SU’s 26 games this season. Matthew Crisafulli | Staff Photographer

It’s not the same star status she held back in high school, though. Rather, it’s a new role, shaped around her unselfishness and defensive tenacity, that keeps the Orange ticking.

“She’s so special,” SU head coach Felisha Legette-Jack said about Shy. “She cares more about the team than even herself.”

That first summer night back in her apartment, though, Shy didn’t feel so special. It might’ve been the first time in a while — if ever — that Shy felt out of her depth.

“I was definitely used to being away, but never actually staying in another place without my parents,” Shy said. “It was definitely a bit different. I did get very homesick.”

Growing up, Shy played the piano. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she learned to cook by studying her mother in the kitchen. She can whip up some mean empanadas or pasta alfredo. Gwen was never a strong swimmer, but Shy learned how to do it swimming in her uncle’s pool without any formal training. Everything came natural to her.

Basketball was no exception. The way Patrick recalled it, Shy was at a track meet when a few of her friends’ parents came up to her, noting her height. They asked the seventh-grader if she’d ever played basketball. When she responded “no,” they invited her to try out for a local Catholic Youth Organization squad.

With her delayed start, Shy was initially the worst player on that team. She didn’t let that feeling last long.

“Right from there, she tells me she wants to try to get better,” Patrick recalled. “So I was like, ‘Hey, let’s give it a shot. Let’s see what happens.’”

“Giving it a shot,” in this case, meant setting Shy up with Jerry Powell, a New York-based trainer who has coached several NBA players, per the New York Daily News. “Seeing what happens,” in this case, meant watching Shy’s meteoric rise to high school basketball stardom. Patrick recalled Powell telling him Shy was one of the fastest learners he’s trained in a long time.

Within a year of learning to dribble, she was a varsity starter for William Floyd High School (New York) as an eighth grader, Patrick said. By her sophomore year, she was walking the same halls that WNBA champions Sue Bird and Tina Charles did at Queens-based high school Christ the King. By 2022, Shy was playing a key role at Long Island Lutheran, one of the nation’s best high school teams.

Her profile grew so dramatically, in fact, that Kristen Sharkey — then SU’s associate head coach — was soon in the Hawkins’ living room, trying to convince Shy to come to Syracuse. When Shy returned to William Floyd as a senior, she was a local celebrity, Gwen said, garnering thousands of followers and packed-out crowds.

“It was unbelievable,” Patrick said. “We’re from a small little town, so it’s like, just to be recruited? The whole process was mindblowing, to have so much attention.”

But once she got to SU, without the hype of recruiting rankings or the packed gyms waiting to see her, Shy was just a college freshman.

Of course, the thing about college is everybody was the go-to player in high school. Everything was more aggressive, more physical. Heading into preseason practices, Patrick said, Shy was nervous, and she had reason to be.

Former SU forward Kyra Wood recalled running hours of “champions,” essentially a revved-up version of suicides. The practices were intense, and there were difficult days where — if she wasn’t thick-skinned — Shy might’ve broken, Gwen recalled.

“It’s a lot mentally,” Gwen said. “And I have to say, my daughter makes me really proud. Because she gets through those hard days.”

She was hard on herself. Years of success molded a higher standard, and when Shy didn’t meet it, she’d sometimes “beat herself up for it,” Patrick said.

Her limited opportunity only confounded the issue. Wood thinks Shy expected to contribute heavily as a freshman. When she didn’t, it magnified every mistake she made, because she played with the fear of getting benched. Last year, Shy averaged just 11 minutes per game while the Orange slogged their way to a 12-win campaign.

“The fear, or the lack of confidence, came when, ‘OK, if I make a mistake, then I’m going to be pulled out,’” Wood said of Shy. “It was always so much going on in her head.”

But Patrick always told her it would get easier. And it did.

Shy didn’t know she’d have an expanded role this season, Gwen says, but as she woke up for her 6 a.m. offseason workouts, she hoped for it. Seven games in, her wish was granted when she picked up her first start against Howard on Nov. 30, 2025.

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It wasn’t a show-stopping performance by any means — 10 points, six rebounds and three steals in 27 minutes — but it was the type of performance that’s been expected of her since. Legette-Jack just needs her to be a versatile starter who allows the other four to shine by playing tough defense.

“She’s a very unselfish player,” Phelia said. “In order to win, you have to have players on your team that are gonna do whatever it takes.”

Shy has evolved into that type of player. It’s why she picked up seven consecutive starts after that Howard game. It’s why, when she was benched for four straight games after Syracuse’s win over Florida State, Legette-Jack gave her every opportunity to earn her way back into the lineup when Phelia was out against Stanford.

Shy and Phelia are “Orange sisters,” Legette-Jack said, meaning the two are accountability partners. They pick each other’s brains and take responsibility for each other’s effort levels daily.

Thus, when Legette-Jack deputized Shy to replace Phelia against the Cardinal, it meant something. Before the game, Phelia told Shy she needed to do the little things, be aggressive and, most importantly, be mentally ready.

Because this was her moment. No one could take it away from her.

“You gotta believe that the mistake you made is not your fault; the ball wasn’t round enough, you didn’t have enough air in it, the rim was crooked,” Legette-Jack said this January, referring to Shy. “You gotta believe that you belong. Nobody takes your confidence, you relinquish it.”

Shy played 39 minutes in that game — the most of any Syracuse player — and scored 10 points to help the Orange secure a 69-58 win over Stanford. She’s started six of Syracuse’s seven games since. If you ask Gwen, she’ll tell you that Shy’s time has finally come.

So, where is Shy’s confidence right now?

“It builds up more and more,” Shy said. “Every practice and every game.”

Published on February 19, 2026 at 1:09 am
Contact Mauricio: mjpalmar@syr.edu | @mpalmarDO