These are some of the many reasons why Shimek is MSU’s female athlete of the decade.

There were many great candidates, but Shimek’s play on some of the game’s biggest stages and on the university’s most prominent women’s team earn her this distinction. She scored 14 points with 11 rebounds as the Spartans tied the largest Final Four comeback in history, beating Tennessee to advance to the 2005 national championship game. In the prior game, she helped send the team to the Final Four with 24 points and 10 rebounds, beating Stanford in the Kansas City Regional Final.

In her senior season, playing against one of the most dominant post players of this era, Oklahoma’s Courtney Paris, Shimek rang up 25 points and 14 rebounds as the Spartans beat the Sooners by 20 in Norman, Okla. She also scored a career high 31 points in the Big Ten Tournament against Iowa that season.

Shimek would finish her junior and senior seasons averaging 16.1 points and 8.7 rebounds per game.

Shimek played in the NCAA Tournament in each of her four years on campus and the team went 96-35 in those seasons.

The team won the 2004-05 Big Ten regular season and tournament championship and went to the Sweet 16 the following season. She became the first Spartan and only the fifth Big Ten player to establish career totals of 1,700 points and 1,100 rebounds.

While she certainly had a wealth of talent around her, it is going to take a special player to do what Shimek did in Green and White.

The runners-up

Two players Shimek ran with, Kristin Haynie and Lindsay Bowen, certainly deserve recognition as two of the best. Bowen ranks just 41 points behind her classmate Shimek on MSU’s all-time scoring list and is the preeminent 3-point shooter in program history.

And when you ask anybody about who embodies MSU women’s basketball, the answer will be Haynie. Her performance in the 2005 NCAA Tournament is nothing short of legendary, recording one of two triple-doubles in program history in the Sweet 16 against Vanderbilt and functioning as the team’s catalyst. She ranks 10th in scoring and first in both assists and steals in program history.

Field hockey senior Floor Rijpma is one of the top scorers in team history, ranking third in points (138) and goals (60), and was named to the First Team All-America her junior and senior seasons and the Third Team All-America her sophomore season.

Women’s golf’s Sara Brown is the program’s career stroke leader, a three-time First Team All-Big Ten selection and had four first place finishes in her career. She also was a two-time winner of the George Alderton Female Athlete of the Year award, which is given annually to the university’s top female athlete.

Matt Bishop is a State News football reporter. He can be reached at bishop20@msu.edu.