Sabine Lipe admits the player and woman she has become, the one who will walk the floor on senior day Saturday for the UTEP women's basketball team two days after Thursday's game against Florida International, doesn't look much like the version of her who arrived from Latvia in 2018.
She was excited to be arriving in El Paso then, the latest in the Latvian pipeline to UTEP, but with all the reservations any foreign first-time college athlete would have at the end of a 9,000-mile journey with so much uncertainty.
Five years later, which included a one-year detour to Northern Colorado, here is what Lipe is certain of: She loves El Paso.