Charles Nailen/The Hoya Senior forward Rebekkah Brunson is the Hoyas’ all-time leading rebounder with 1,093 career boards.

With her aggressive style in the paint, senior forward Rebekkah Brunson lifted the Hoyas’ game, leading the Big East in rebounding and scoring. Now she will lend her talents to the Sacramento Monarchs in the Women’s National Basketball Association. In Saturday’s draft in Secaucus, N.J., Brunson was selected 10th in the first round.

“I think that the team has so many great players, I’ll just be able to learn as much as possible my first year and hopefully later on make an impact,” Brunson told wnba.com.

Overall, 38 players were selected by the 13 teams in the league over three rounds. The Sacramento Monarchs finished last year with a 19-15 record and made it to the Western Conference Finals, losing to the Los Angeles Sparks 2-1 in the three-game series.

“Rebekkah is a wonderful athlete,” said Monarchs General Manager and Head Coach John Whisenant in a statement released on Saturday. “I feel she was the most consistent rebounder in the draft this year. She has great hands and is a smaller version of Yolanda Griffith. I believe she will fit in well with our system.”

Brunson, a 6-foot-3 forward, hails from nearby Oxon Hill, Md., the home of Georgetown’s latest men’s professional player, Mike Sweetney. Brunson has consistently stood out in her four-year career as a Hoya. In her first year, she earned Big East Rookie of the Year honors, averaging 14.8 points per game and was the first freshman to lead the conference in rebounding average, with 9.2 boards per game. Her sophomore year was slightly disappointing as a stress fracture in her lower right leg caused her to miss nine games. Both her junior and senior year she led the conference in rebounding, with 10.7 boards per game as a junior and 12 per game as a senior.

Playing for Team USA at the Pan-American Games last summer helped raise her exposure, especially after she led the team in scoring and helped the team garner a silver medal. Her senior year was her best, leading the Big East in scoring (19 points per game) and rebounding. She also surpassed the 1,000 rebound mark, the first female Hoya to record more than 1,000 points and rebounds. She finished with a record 1,093 rebounds and is second-highest on the career points list at Georgetown with 1,762. She also was on the All-Big East First Team and was named the conference Defensive Player of the Year.

Even though the Hoyas finished the season with a 13-15 record that ended their season in the first round of the Big East Tournament, Brunson kept a high profile in the college basketball world. She became the first female player at Georgetown to become an AP All-American Honorable Mention.

Diana Taurasi went to the Phoenix Mercury as the top draft pick. Taurasi, a point guard, became one of the nation’s most prominent female athletes while leading Connecticut to three NCAA championships. Her farewell parade in Hartford drew over 325,000 fans. The second pick was another guard, Alana Beard, the AP Player of the Year, who was selected by the Washington Mystics while the Charlotte Sting took Stanford center Nicole Powell as the third pick. Brunson was the second Big East player selected in the draft this year and one of five overall.

Brunson will graduate from Georgetown next month after having majored in sociology. She is the second player from the program to enter the draft; Katie Smrcka-Duffy (COL ’01) was selected by the Monarchs in the fourth round in 2001.

“I go at it really hard, I’m a great rebounder and I’m going to be intense every time I step on the court,” Brunson said during an interview with ESPN after the draft.

Brunson will have little time to adapt to life on the West Coast, as the Monarchs’ preseason begins on May 5. The season lasts throughout the summer and into September. Leaving the area and embarking on a new career do not seem to faze Brunson, however.

“I’m really excited. I’ve been in D.C. my entire life, I think it will be good for me to get away and experience another city,” she told wnba.com.