Feature flashback: Jen Snitker’s love for daughter, basketball leads to happy surprise

This article appeared in the Arizona Daily Sun on August 24, 2002.

A mother returns

By ED ODEVEN
Sun Sports Staff

“A mother’s love is instinctual, unconditional, and forever,” someone once said.

Jen Snitker is a mother. She’s also a college basketball player, a pretty good one.

Before the 2000-01 season, Snitker made a heart-wrenching decision based solely on the welfare of her young daughter Jaidyn. At the time, Snitker was attending Marshall University in Huntington, W. Va. She decided to move back to Arizona.

It was the only option.

“I did it for Jaidyn. She’s the most important thing to me,” Snitker said.

In the fall of 2000, Snitker enrolled at NAU and joined the women’s basketball team as a walk-on, but she never played a minute that season. Since she left one Division I school for another, Snitker was required to sit out a year based on the…