Chantel Tremitiere

Chantel Ruth Tremitiere (born October 20, 1969) is an American former professional women's basketball player.

Tremitiere played for Auburn in college and professionally in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) from 1997 through 2001 with the Sacramento Monarchs, the Utah Starzz, and the Indiana Fever.

Early life Tremitiere was born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Her father is Arnold Kelly. She was then adopted into the family of William and Barbara Tremitiere as an infant and grew up in York, Pennsylvania. She has 14 brothers and sisters of differing ethnic backgrounds.

She grew up playing basketball with her siblings, stating that they needed another player to make two even teams. She averaged 30 points a game at Hannah Penn Middle School and was a basketball star when she transferred to William Penn High School. She graduated from high school in 1987 and chose to attend Auburn University, where she received a full basketball scholarship. In her Auburn career, the team never lost a game at home.

She earned her bachelor's degree in Public Relations from Auburn, then was an assistant basketball coach for Auburn (1991–92); the University of Texas (1992–93), and the University of Massachusetts Amherst (1993–96). In her rookie season, she had her most successful season in her career, averaging 7.6 points, 4.8 assists. She also led the WNBA with an average of 37.5 minutes per game and started every game she played. Playing for the Monarchs also gave Tremitiere the opportunity to be reunited with Ruthie Bolton, her teammate at Auburn.

After her rookie season, Tremitiere was traded to Utah on May 5, 1998, for Lady Grooms (Grooms would go on to play the remainder of her career (7 more seasons) with the Monarchs). She would play two seasons with Utah in 1998 and 1999. In her sophomore season she averaged 5.5 points and 3.6 assists. On June 21, 1999, a controversial decision to waive Tremitiere would be made by coach Frank Layden. Layden only coached the Starzz for two weeks before resigning for "personal reasons", but some Starzz players have voiced their contempt of Layden's coaching style and said he was "too harsh" on the players.

She was resigned by the Starzz on July 6 and finished the 1999 season with them. However, her productivity would drop in her third year with a drastic drop in minutes from the previous year (25.3 minutes per game to 9.6 minutes) along with averaging 1.1 points and 1.1 assists.

On December 15, 1999, she was acquired in the 2000 expansion draft and joined the newly formed Indiana Fever. She played one season for the Fever, suffering from an ankle injury most of the year which limited her to an average of 12.7 minutes, 2 points, and 2 assists per game.

Tremitiere announced her retirement from the WNBA on April 23, 2001, at the age of 31. The final game of her career was her last game of the 2000 season with the Fever. That game was played on August 9, 2000, in a 67–51 win over the Charlotte Sting where she recorded 3 points, 3 rebounds and 3 assists. Tremitiere ended her career never reaching the WNBA playoffs and never been on a team with a .500 or more record. For the four seasons she played, her team's record every year was Sacramento 10–18, Utah 8–22, Utah 15–17 and Indiana 9–23.

In 2002 she played professional basketball briefly again in Turkey and for the WABA team, the York City Noise.

Post-WNBA activities Tremitiere retired from basketball in 2002. She serves as a professor at Auburn in the business school.

Regular season

College Source