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FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Donna Sublett likes the long shot.

Unheralded, undermanned, unexpected.

The greatest surprise no one saw coming.

Despite Donna growing up in Missouri and attending LSU, everybody knew who she rooted for when FGCU's women's basketball team upset LSU twice and beat Missouri in the NCAA Tournament.

In both situations, the Eagles had the Tigers by the tail.

And when FGCU's men stunned second-seeded Georgetown 78-68 in the NCAA Tournament, her emotions flowed.

"I always loved the underdog," Donna said. "My father played football at Missouri, as well as college basketball, and I saw Pete Maravich play at LSU. But there's nothing like being around young people and spending time with them.

"I am not a crier. Most people haven't seen me cry. But I'm sitting next to Robbie (Roepstorff) with 7 minutes to go against Georgetown in the NCAA Tournament and I started crying. Robbie looked over and said, 'What's the matter?' I said, 'We're going to win.' After the game was over, Sherwood Brown asked, 'What's the matter.' I said, 'We won.' Tears were streaming down my face."

Donna has enjoyed watching basketball so much, she has attended Final Fours and watched former Cape Coral High star Teddy Dupay's City of Palms Tournament basketball games. When she and her husband Jim paid to sit in the VIP section, she often sat next to former North Carolina coach Roy Williams.

Donna and Jim Sublett's support of FGCU athletics went to another level when they met former Eagles men's basketball coach Andy Enfield in 2011.

"(Senior Associate AD) Butch (Perchan) is the kind of person where he asks for a quarter and you give him $10,000," Donna says. "Andy was worse. After we went to lunch with them, we said, 'Did we just tell them we'd give them $25,000 to do the locker rooms? We didn't even know Andy; but we liked him."

During a two-day road trip to Stetson, Donna and Jim got an inside look at how Enfield coached.

"Jim went to Johns Hopkins for engineering and didn't know a lot about basketball and football," she said. "He didn't think a lot of intelligence was needed to play those sports.

"But Andy is very much an intellectual. When he let us in practices and shootarounds, Jim realized how smart you had to be to play basketball. You had to learn different plays, you had to know the team's other players, what way they went with what shots they liked."

When FGCU's men's and women's basketball teams played in ASUN doubleheaders, the Subletts enjoyed that experience. That gave her a chance to meet the women; and when Sarah Hansen asked her to attend a women's game, Donna became a regular.

The Subletts soon funded players with athletic scholarships. Two of the recipients were point guard Brett Comer and forward Eddie Murray; and they combined on one of the Eagles' rim-rattling dunks in the monumental upset victory over Georgetown, which thrilled Donna. They also have established endowed scholarships.

In 2020, the Subletts gave a $1 million gift for The Sublett Family Strength and Conditioning Center renovation within Alico Arena. It features a state-of-the-art weight room that can accommodate more than 100 student-athletes at a time. Most recently she generously committed another $1.5 million towards FGCU Athletics enhancements, which will include a first-ever, much-needed scoreboard at the Tennis Complex. 

Donna says a big reason she and her husband gave is that her father credited his coaches with him staying in school and earning a degree in physical education.

He then owned an auto parts store and sold office space.

"My dad came from a poor section of Independence, Mo.," she said. "His brothers got in trouble and went to jail. Had he never gotten a college degree, he could've gone the way they did.

"Going to college opened a lot of doors for him."

Today, attending FGCU games – often in her green tennis shoes – is a welcome diversion.

Four years ago, she lost her soulmate.

"People ask me if I'll date and I said, 'Why date? I'll never find another Jim Sublett,'" Donna says. "I just won't be able to. He was too smart and funny. Extremely funny, a great person.

"I'm glad I exposed Jim to sports at FGCU because it was another fun thing for us to do. Now, it's a great thing to have a social outing I can do comfortably by myself. I go to the games and talk to the kids."

Please consider supporting our student-athletes by joining the Eagles Club, supporting a scholarship and/or special project. Contact Matt Ring at (239) 745-4434 or mring@fgcu.edu for questions or options to make a donation. Go Eagles!