Pivec’s goal remains WNBA, but Europe’s not bad, either
Mikayla Pivec is home in Oregon for the summer
Mikayla Pivec is back in Oregon, and — no surprise — has plans for a busy summer.
The former Oregon State standout has returned from a season playing professionally in Spain. The 5-10 Pivec started at shooting guard for Cadi La Seu, which reached the semifinals of the Spanish league’s first division. Pivec averaged 10 points, six rebounds and 2.3 assists in 34 games while shooting .394 from the field, .311 from 3-point range and .789 from the foul line. The Lynnwood, Wash., native was 5 for 10 from the 3-point line in her final four games — including two in the postseason — after going through an 0-for-14 streak over the previous 11 contests.
It was a pleasant turnaround from the previous year for Pivec, 25, when she left her Spanish pro team (Club Deportivo Promete) at midseason, underwent surgery for a torn meniscus in her left knee and was one of the last two cuts from the WNBA’s Minnesota Lynx.
“I had such a miserable season overseas (in 2021), it had me questioning whether (pro basketball) was for me, whether or not I wanted to continue to do this,” she says over lunch in Lake Oswego. “After this season, I’m in a much better spot mentally than I was then.”
Pivec, one of two Americans on Cadi La Seu’s roster, shot better through the first half of the season than in the second.
“I started hot but cooled off,” she says. “If I’d ended the season the way I started it, it would been an amazing season. It was still a solid season overall. Our team had one of the lowest budgets (in the league), and I helped them do really well. I can look back and think of things I could have improved on, like 3-point shooting in the middle of the season, but I consider the season a success.”
Pivec contracted COVID in late January. She missed only one game, “but it took several games for me to find my way back into a rhythm.”
Cadi La Seu finished 19-11 and fourth in the 16-team league during the regular season and advanced to the semifinals in the playoffs, losing twice to No. 1 seed and eventual champion Avenida. Pivec spent four days vacationing in Greece before flying to Seattle on Thursday, May 12. She visited her parents in Lynnwood for a day and a half, then drove to Eugene to watch younger sister Malia, a redshirt junior at Oregon, finish fifth in the steeplechase in a personal-record 10:01.93 in the Pac-12 Championships at Hayward Field.
Pivec had a successful season with Cadi La Seu in the Spanish Pro League (courtesy Mikayla Pivec)
Then it was on to the Willamette Valley, where she began a paid internship with Portland-based CorVel Corporation, a national provider of risk management solutions for workers’ compensation, auto, health and disability insurance.
“They have a department looking at data analysis,” Pivec says. “I’m hoping to learn some of the skills that team is working on and be exposed to that. Over this next five years, I’m going to try to learn different skills and be open to learning different things in health care or (technology) that I might be able to use for a career after basketball.”
Pivec plans to live with friends in Corvallis and mostly work remotely, going into the CorVel office once or twice a week on the days she works with a sports performance coach in Portland.
An academic All-American (graduating with a 3.93 GPA) and Pac-12 Scholar-Athlete of the Year in women’s basketball as a senior at Oregon State in 2019-20, Pivec owns an Honors degree in biohealth sciences (pre-med) and a master’s in biochemistry and biophysics from OSU. She figured a career in medicine would happen some day. Before her senior year, she took and passed the “MCAT” — the standardized exam for medical students, which generally holds for three years.
“The time to take it again is coming up, but I want to play basketball and see this out for at least the next three to five years,” says Pivec, a four-year starter and two-time All-Pac-12 performer at Oregon State. “If I’m 30, do I want to go to medical school for four years? I’m contemplating a number of things.”
For now, she is focusing on developing her basketball skills. Lynx coaches gave her pointers on aspects of her game that needed improvement.
“One, a quicker release on my 3-point shot, and two, tightening up my handles (ball-handling),” Pivec says. “I need to be able to be a versatile guard. My ultimate goal is to play in the WNBA at some point, but if not, I still want to enjoy the overseas process and the opportunities it gets me. At first I was so focused on making the WNBA, I’d see myself as a failure if I didn’t.
“But now I’m realizing there are great benefits to playing in Europe — the chance to learn a different culture, travel the world, meet friends and get paid to play the game I love.”
Pivec says the quality of play in the Spanish League is a step below the WNBA.
“The WNBA is the best league in the world,” she says. “The top couple of teams in Spain are at the top level, but the WNBA teams are really stacked. Turkey, Italy and China have very good leagues, too.”
Pivec has an ace up her sleeve. Her great grandparents on the paternal side were from Ireland. In March, she applied for Irish citizenship. If she gets it, she qualifies for “native” status for any team in Europe. That is important because rules generally limit teams to two Americans and two imports. With native status, she wouldn’t have to qualify as an American or import.
“We’re hopeful that will come through this summer,” says Pivec, who thinks Italy is the place she would like to play next.
For the first time, Pivec has hired a sports performance coach — Susan Borchardt and her husband, Curtis, who live in Beaverton. Susan is a former Stanford player who went on to play in the WNBA and Europe.
“I want someone who is experienced in the field,” Pivec says. “They have worked with a lot of high-profile players like Kelsey Plum and Sue Bird. I want to invest in my potential. I don’t want to regret that, if the door swings open for (WNBA) opportunity, I wasn’t ready. I want to be as ready as possible.”
Pivec also hopes to work with OSU assistant coach Jonas Chatterton and to use Oregon State’s weight room and training facilities this summer. Once a Beaver, always a Beaver, she says.
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