The North Carolina-North Carolina State rivalry has found a new battleground.
The women’s basketball programs at the Atlantic Coast Conference schools are the latest entries in the recruiting race for NEPA Elite Clark 17U forward Ciera Toomey.
ACC champion North Carolina State came through with an offer today.
Toomey’s previous offer had come from North Carolina two weeks ago.
North Carolina State won its second straight ACC title in the 2020-21 season, landing one of the four No. 1 regional seeds in the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I women’s tournament, and ended the season ranked seventh nationally. The Wolfpack was 12-2 in the ACC regular season, won the ACC Tournament and reached the Sweet 16 with two NCAA Tournament wins.
Diamond Johnson, the two-time state Player of the Year from Neumann-Goretti, who faced Toomey and her Dunmore High School team in the 2020 state tournament, recently transferred from Rutgers to North Carolina State.
The 6-foot-3 Toomey was a first-team, Class 4A all-state choice as a sophomore at Dunmore in 2020-21 after receiving third-team honors in Class 3A as a freshman.
In all, 17 NCAA Division I schools have extended offers to Toomey.
Toomey’s other Division I scholarship offers have come from Boston College, Bucknell, Michigan, Northeastern, Northwestern, Ohio State, Penn State, Pittsburgh, Rider, St. John’s, Vanderbilt, Villanova and West Virginia. She also has offers to join the programs at Columbia and Pennsylvania, which, as Ivy League members, cannot offer athletic scholarships.
CREDITS: Andrew Maddock graphic; Tim Drewes photo.
