Mount Saint Mary Athletics Hall of Fame
NEWBURGH, N.Y. - Former women's basketball player Christine Baker was inducted as a member of the Mount Saint Mary College Athletics Hall of Fame on Friday, April 17, 2015.
Baker led the women’s basketball program to a 69-31 overall record across her four years with the Knights. They also won two Women’s Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WIAC) championships and the Hudson Valley Women’s Athletic Conference (HVWAC) championship in her senior season. She was a two-time HVWAC All-Star, two-time All-WIAC Team member, an Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) Division III Metro Region First-Team All-Star and an All-Metropolitan Division III Team member. She finished her career as the program’s leading scorer with 1,526 points in four seasons, a total that still stands third on the all-time list.
Baker played one season with the Knights before the Kaplan Center opened. She remembers how proud she and her teammates were to be student-athletes that had the opportunity to play in the brand new building. She also cherishes the moments when her grandparents were able to watch her play at the Mount.
Baker calls sports her “foundation.” She says her training as an athlete is very much how she approaches life—“anything can be accomplished with practice, hard work and dedication.”
Baker volunteered the opportunity to serve as a color analyst for Hudson Valley Talk Radio as it covered Mount Saint Mary College men’s and women’s basketball for the 2009-10 season.
Baker launched her own marketing and PR consulting firm, CB Creative, in 2009. She is the founder of Walk4Good, Inc., a non-profit organization whose primary mission is to inspire and empower people to practice kindness and to pass acts of kindness onto others. She is also the author of Why She Plays: The World of Women’s Basketball (University of Nebraska Press 2008), which includes stories from her playing days at the Mount. She is considered an expert on sports journalism for women, Title IX and women’s sports participation.
Baker has received many awards for her athletic and career accomplishments. She was named one of the Hudson Valley’s PROUD Women of the Year in 2008. She was one of Rockland County’s Forty under 40 and was a finalist for a Billie Award in Journalism from the Women’s Sports Foundation in 2009. In 2011, she was a finalist for the Sundance Screenwriters Institute. She was inducted into the Middletown, Conn. Sports Hall of Fame in 2011. She is the 2013 recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award from Mount Saint Mary College for her volunteer work and professional accomplishments.
