After a satisfying senior year, Nicole Bellinghausen hopes to land a recording contract

By Steve Daniel

She will always be remembered as the Lady Monarch who sang the national anthem. She's OK with that, but Nicole Bellinghausen also wanted to show the team's loyal fans what she could do with a basketball before leaving Old Dominion. She finally got the chance her senior year.

After three seasons in what she called a "cheerleader" role, supporting her talented teammates from the bench, Bellinghausen averaged 12.6 minutes of playing time her final year in a Lady Monarch uniform. She closed out her senior season with an impressive string of games that included a 12-point, 8-rebound performance against St. John's, a career-high 17 points against Richmond and 10 points and 6 rebounds in the CAA championship.

The 140 points she scored her senior year nearly doubled the total from her first three seasons combined.

"It was satisfying to know that, before I left, people knew I could play," said the 6-1 Bellinghausen, who had been Nevada Player of the Year as a high school senior. "I had felt that I was going to leave here and no one's ever going to know I was any good, that I was on scholarship, that I could score."

So now it's all right with her if fans recall her renditions of "The Star-Spangled Banner," because those who were around for her senior year will also remember that she had game.

Bellinghausen, who majored in human services counseling, still recalls the first time she sang the national anthem. It was a home game against Stanford her freshman year. "Afterward, coach Larry told me, 'You're singing at every big game we have,' because we won that game."

The tradition continued throughout her collegiate career.

"Sometimes I wouldn't know I'd be singing," she said. "Somebody wouldn't show up and then someone would run over and say, 'Nicole, can you sing the national anthem?' I would be in the layup line out of breath, and then I would have to run over there."

Bellinghausen got hooked on music after performing a solo in church as a third-grader. She developed into a talented singer with an uncanny ability to imitate the famous artists she listened to on the radio. In high school, she joined two other girls in a group called CHOZYN, singing R&B, soul and hip-hop. They won some talent shows, but going to separate colleges effectively ended the partnership.

Bellinghausen, however, has not given up her hopes for a singing career. If things have worked out the way she planned, she's now in New York knocking on doors in pursuit of a recording contract.

She knows it will take patience, hard work and luck to make it in the Big Apple, but Bellinghausen has a contact others don't have: she's the goddaughter of comedian Bill Cosby. When Cosby was on campus two years ago to deliver the commencement address, he promised to introduce her to his friends in the music business, but only after she earned her degree.

Bellinghausen said her plan is to get a job in counseling to pay the bills "until I can get on my own feet with the music."

And after making it in the music world, she might even come back to basketball - as a coach.

"At halftime, before the coaches came into the locker room, I would write on the chalkboard things I knew coach Larry was going to say. The first time I did it - I was a freshman - she comes in all mad, and she looks at the board and asks, 'Who wrote this?' I thought I was in trouble.

"Then she said, 'Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Good job, Nicole.' So ever since, at halftime I would write on the board and she would come in and circle what I wrote, or put a star by it or add more to it. So I'm thinking, maybe I'd be a good coach one day."

Then she added with a smile, "But I want to do music first."