Former Toledo women’s basketball standout\u00a0Sophia Wiard\u00a0will begin her professional basketball career with Spain’s Movistar Estudiantes, as she recently signed a professional contract to play with the club.<\/p>\n
With the signing, Wiard\u00a0joins several alumnae who have signed pro contracts in Spain, a list which includes Sara Rokkanen, Melissa Goodall and Brenae Harris.<\/p>\n
![\"Graphic](\"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Sophia-WIARD-SIGNED-SIDE.jpg\")
Wiard is Toledo’s all-time record holder in games played (157), minutes (4,957) and free throw percentage (.843) along with fifth in assists (618) and three-point percentage (.382), seventh in points (1,696) and free throws made (435), and eighth in three-pointers made (181).<\/p>\n
The Michigan native was named the seventh Mid-American Conference Player of the Year in Toledo history after averaging 14.1 ppg, 4.6 apg and 4.5 rpg last season as well as adding 51 steals. Wiard’s numbers were good for fourth in the league in assists per game, sixth in points and eighth in total steals. The Michigan native was also named to the Women’s College All-Star Game Watch List and received MAC Female Scholar-Athlete of the Week twice last season.<\/p>\n
In addition to her MAC Player of the Year selection in 2023-24, Wiard has been named All-MAC three times, taking First Team (2023-24), Second Team (2021-22) and Third Team (2022-23) honors in her collegiate career.<\/p>\n
Wiard helped Toledo compile a 112-46 record in her five-year career as a Rocket. This included an 86-17 mark over UT’s last three seasons, which has featured three MAC regular season championships, the 2023 MAC tournament title, and an NCAA Tournament victory over Iowa State.<\/p>\n
Movistar Estudiantes, based out of Madrid and competing in Liga Femenina Endesa, was a semifinalist in the Copa de la Reina and went 6-2 in EuroCup Women competition last season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Toledo standout inked her first professional contract ahead of the 2024-25 season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":917,"featured_media":87153,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,56,356,1,7],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87152"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/917"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87152"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87192,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87152\/revisions\/87192"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Graphic](\"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Sophia-WIARD-SIGNED-SIDE-150x150.jpg\")
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