Indiana Women's Basketball Recruit Lenee Beaumont Interview: Journey to Being a Hoosier

Incoming Hoosier guard Lenée Beaumont has been a baller her whole life as the six-foot Lisle, Ill. native just recently led her high school team to a second place finish at state. Training everyday of the week plus dedicated coaches have led the Illinois Gatorade Player of the Year to Indiana, the second best team in the nation.

LISLE, Ill. — Indiana women’s basketball recruit Lenee Beaumont is a six-foot powerful point guard out of Lisle, Ill. that’s made basketball her life since around the age of four.

Her humble and selfless character took over as she said she never imagined she’d be playing for the Big Ten conference on an Indiana squad that’s ranked No. 2 in the nation and just earned the first NCAA Tournament one-seed in Hoosier program history.

In reality, she's a top 100 nationally ranked player coming in at No. 83 in the 2023 HoopGurlz Recruiting Rankings.

“Little Lenée had big goals for sure, but never would have projected this to be like really a possibility,” Beaumont said.

But everyone else projected this including her high school head coach Joe Kilbride.

“Lenée is probably the easiest evaluation you could ever have,” he said. 

“Anybody who knows the game watches Lenée for five minutes and knows she’s going to be really good.”

Growing up in Lisle, Beaumont was close to all of her basketball resources — a 5-minute drive from her high school and gym at Benet Academy and a short drive to plenty of major Illinois cities including Chicago under 27 miles east.

With less than 25,000 people in her suburb of the Windy City, Beaumont has become almost a small-town athlete celebrity as her community and even random people she doesn’t know are encouraging the guard on her journey to Indiana.

Lenée Beaumont poses with Indiana associate coach Rhet Wierzba, coach Teri Moren, assistant coach Linda Sayavongchanh and associate head coach Glenn Box / IU Athletics

“I’ll be at my high school games, and random people I’ve never spoken to will be like, ‘good luck, go Hoosiers’,” Beaumont said. “There’s so much support out here.”

Whether it’s a community member tipping their Indiana hat to Beaumont or younger girls showing up to her games, the Lisle community is behind this athlete who finished out her high school career second best in the state.

Two seasons ago, the Benet Redwings finished fourth in the state. This year, the team exceeded that but fell just short to O’Fallon in double-overtime of the title game.

“Obviously in the moment you’re very disappointed because as a competitor you just want to win every game you play,” Beaumont said. “A lot of people counted us out this year. We didn’t have as much depth in typical years from our high school.”

This season the Redwings had a younger squad coached by Kilbride, who’s been head coach of Benet women’s basketball for nine seasons.

“Senior year, my coach would always say, ‘if you’re freaked out, if you’re nervous, everybody else is going to be nervous’," Beaumont said.

The Benet Academy women's basketball team walks down the court during the Class 4A state tournament / Sadie.sterbenz on Instagram

With Beaumont’s increased vocal leadership, as she used to just lead through action, the team of 'youngins' proved themselves as state contenders led by Beaumont's performance, who honestly didn’t recall how many points she scored in the title game. It was either 27 or 28, she said as she heard both numbers floating around.

Kilbride confirmed she had 27 and finished her season averaging 19.3 points, 7.6 rebounds, 3.2 assists and 1.7 steals per contest. Her 619 total points on the season sets the program's single season record to his knowledge.

“She’s just a tremendous shooter, period," Kilbride said. “She’s a three-level scorer. She’s a catch and shoot at the arc. She’s a shoot it off the dribble at the arc. She’s a midrange pull-up kid. She’s a float kid and a get all the way to the rim kid.”

Like most great athletes, Beaumont’s success wasn’t easily handed to her as she’s worked at this craft since running along the sidelines at her father Michael’s practices.

A former player at Carroll College, Michael Beaumont has been coaching basketball for more than 25 years, and when Beaumont was small, he’d have no choice but to bring her to the court.

“I’d be on the sidelines just dribbling up and down, and all his players were like babysitters almost because they would watch me on the sideline and make sure I didn’t get in the way,” Beaumont said.

Little Lenée Beaumont competes at Doug Bruno Basketball Camp and earns first place on the WNBA Team and top memorial award / Colette Beaumont on Facebook

From there, Beaumont's love for the game continued to grow. She always focused on the sport and would even shoot around with her now high school sophomore brother Brendan outside of practice, but she kept leveling up.

“The spring, summer of my sophomore year going into my junior year is when I started to flip a switch,” Beaumont said. “If I wasn’t doing two workouts a day, it was not a normal day for me.”

Beaumont did everything from lifting more to adding workouts. Although a four-year varsity player, she really didn’t see much action in her first two seasons and had to work for her moment.

“I didn’t really play at all,” Beaumont said. “Sophomore year was COVID, so that was also a struggle, but I started. I got minutes. Junior year was technically my first real season.”

Beaumont was just 5-foot-8-inches when she started off as a freshman, but that six-foot frame took shape just in time for her to become a big-time baller junior season.

“Everyone was like, ‘oh wow, you’re actually really tall,’” Beaumont said. “I was always pretty tall for my class, but not as much as you’d expect.”

Kilbride said although Beaumont had her first college offer in middle school, she still had some room to grow as far as being more aggressive and taking more shots.  

“We talk about it all the time,” Kilbride said. “Don’t play like a kitty cat. Play like a dog. This is the first year in my mind she was a full-on dog.”

Kilbride said Beaumont did an excellent job getting to the rim and hunting shots, which opened up many opportunities for her teammates to shine too.

Perhaps practicing with Kilbride plus working out with WNBA trainer Jeff Pagliocca in the fall led her to this level all while balancing a wild schedule suitable for success at the next level. In season, of course she was committed to high school practices, lifting and the long game schedule, but the off-season is just as long.

For five days of the week, Beaumont drives 45 minutes to an individual skills workout followed up by an hour-drive to lift and then 20 minutes back home. On the weekends, it’s running, conditioning or some other variation of a workout.

If she’s not talking to her parents on the long drives, Beaumont is listening to Drake, her favorite artist, to get her from one destination to the other. With her strict schedule, Beaumont said her friends understand as members of her social circle are athletes too.

“They do think I’m a little crazy sometimes,” Beaumont said. “I’ll be like ‘hey guys, I gotta leave at 10:30, I have a 7 a.m. workout tomorrow’.”

Beaumont’s no-days-off mentality will fit in well with Indiana’s culture as plenty of Hoosiers are known for getting extra minutes in the gym.

“I can’t wait for the individual workouts,” Beaumont said. “They talk about all the time how each player will text [coaches] in the morning and be like ‘hey, can we get a workout in before or after practice?’”

Lenée Beaumont wears the No. 5 for the Indiana women's basketball team / IU Athletics

Beaumont actually didn’t have her sights set on Indiana and was fully planning on committing to another Big Ten school, but a visit to Bloomington met with a friendly and genuine Coach Teri Moren and staff led Beaumont to a change of heart.

“Indiana was not the school I thought I was going to end up at, but as soon as I stepped on campus, just the way they interacted with me, my parents, my brother — they’re so genuine,” she said.

The staff would come to plenty of Beaumont’s high school games and would always check in on her to see how she was doing. That paired with Indiana’s culture led Beaumont to announce her commitment on April 14, 2022, a true relief to know where she would be headed.

Even in the midst of March Madness, the current Hoosiers team still keeps in close touch with Beaumont, who’s been watching as many of their games as possible. If she can’t watch it live, she’s recording it and saving it for later.

“I’m pretty close with a lot of the team members just like going on visits, and they’ll text me when big games are coming up or when I got Gatorade Player of the Year,” Beaumont said. “They’re the best people.”

Beaumont said she’s close with junior guard Sydney Parrish, senior forwards Mackenzie Holmes and Alyssa Geary and graduate student guard Grace Berger.

Kilbride said on Beaumont's recruiting visits, Indiana associate head coach Rhet Wierzba compared her to Berger, the Hoosiers' starting point guard.

Although she will just miss playing with Berger and Geary, she’s excited to play with:

“All of them,” Beaumont said. “I know they’re going to be great mentors, great teammates.”

Beaumont is also best friends with fellow recruit Julianna LaMendola, who also won her state’s Gatorade Player of the Year in Texas, which makes for a pretty powerful bestie pair. Beaumont said the two will most likely be roommates in the fall.

Lenée Beaumont stands by fellow freshman recruit Julianna LaMendola / IU Athletics

“I just can’t wait to get there, play with them,” Beaumont said.

Until then, Beaumont will finish out her senior year of high school at Benet soaking it all in before becoming a Division I athlete. Kilbride said last Sunday at a seventh grade basketball championship the school hosted, Beaumont stopped by to say hi and before he knew it was seen with the kids who all wanted a picture with her.

Beaumont doesn't act like a big shot even though the stats say she is one. Her humble and generous attitude is well respected by her teachers and fellow students, and the community is looking forward to watching her at the next level, Kilbride said.

It’s a good sign Beaumont is already feeling comfortable at Indiana having only been there a handful of times. She saw the Hoosiers defeat Nebraska in overtime on New Year’s Day and plans to come watch the first or second rounds of the NCAA Tournament in Bloomington.

“If I were to do a bracket, I’m picking them to win it,” Beaumont said. “They have the best coaching staff in the country…It’s like the perfect fit, and it felt like home as soon as I stepped on campus.”

Related stories on Indiana women's basketball

• NCAA TOURNAMENT ONE-SEEDS Here's a closer look at South Carolina, Indiana, Stanford and Virginia Tech basketball — the four one-seeds in the 2023 NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Tournament. CLICK HERE
• FORMER PRESIDENT OBAMA'S NCAA TOURNEY BRACKETS Former president Barack Obama submitted his 2023 NCAA Division I Basketball Tournament brackets and has Indiana women making it to the final game. Read more about Obama's top teams and where he placed the Hoosier men. CLICK HERE
• HOW TO WATCH MONMOUTH, TENNESSEE TECH IN FIRST FOUR Indiana's first opponent in the NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Tournament will either be Monmouth or Tennessee Tech. Here's more about the Hawks and Golden Eagles who will face each other in the First Four round of March Madness in Bloomington, Ind. CLICK HERE