Valerie Beckwith closed out her stellar collegiate career at Bates in noteworthy fashion, pulling down NESCAC Player of the Year honors for women’s basketball in the 2008-09 season.

A three-sport captain at Woburn High, and a 1,000-point scorer on the court, Beckwith dialed it back slightly on the Lewiston, Maine, campus, playing two sports, basketball and softball.

Basketball is where she made her mark.

Beckwith was a first-team NESCAC selection as a sophomore and senior, second-team as a junior, and finished with 1,470 points, second on the program’s career scoring list. As a senior, Beckwith averaged 18.3 points a game, ranking second in the conference.

“I guess the common theme, looking back on all the teams I played on, were the friendships we made along the way,’’ said Beckwith, now 29, and living in Charlestown.

“To be able to play multiple sports was great and it gave me a great diversity of friends.’’

She remembers her coaches at Bates pointing out that it was about more than wins and losses.

“You go back to the alumni game every year and you get people coming from different parts of the country and it’s like you haven’t missed a beat,’’ Beckwith said. “You have such a close bond with teammates, especially in college when you spend tons of time together and travel all over together. It’s a very tight-knit group of friends. We have a few weddings this year and we all still maintain those friendships and we make it a point to get together.’’

Beckwith will be in one of those weddings this year, her own. She and Ben Thayer, a former men’s basketball captain at Bates — he played baseball while she played softball in the spring — are getting married on New Year’s Eve.

“We met through basketball parties and get-togethers and started dating junior year in college,’’ Beckwith said. “Supposedly, a high percentage of people who go to Bates end up getting married. I don’t know if that’s fact or fiction.’’

Beckwith, who earned a degree in psychology from Bates, works as a sales account manager for ForeScout Technologies, a cyber security firm in Boston.

She only has fond memories of her time in athletics.

“Athletics had a huge impact on my life as far as teamwork and perspective and having a hard-working, competitive attitude,’’ she said. “All those things I had done in athletics I think translate now into work and everyday life. You work to make sure you make yourself and the people around you better every day, whether it’s in athletics or at work. It’s definitely made an impact on my life and helped make me successful, even as far as being able to take direction and criticism. A coach has influence on you the same as a boss is influential. That correlates with everyday life.’’

Allen Lessels can be reached at lessfam321@gmail.com.