Thoughts of a D1 Athlete

 The Lady Braves had a Be Bold Go Gold game on Saturday, February 17th, to raise awareness of pediatric cancer. We faced the UIC Flames and ultimately suffered a 47-68 loss. There was more at stake in this game than just basketball, even in the absence of competition. Savannah, who played hoops for her basketball team while battling cancer, was present. Her presence served as a symbol of resilience and the determination to face challenges head-on without giving up. The Braves' I-74 rivalry game against the Illinois State University Redbirds was another crucial one. We thought we could defeat them this time because the last time we faced them, the game was really close until the very end. We gave this game our best effort and prepared ourselves quite well. We suffered the most in the opening quarter, being down 9–24. Given our circumstances, that's a very difficult first quarter to recover from. We are also playing with fewer players because we lost another one to a concussion. ...

 I wanted to start occasionally posting student-athlete spotlight posts for women's basketball in order to shake things up. This week's player is Bradley Women's Basketball team guard Alex Rouse. Alex is a business major who is interested in management and leadership. She enjoys engaging with people and embracing the corporate world. The newly constructed Business and Engineering Convergence Center is her favorite part of the Bradley campus. It goes without saying that she attends all of her classes in that building, but her favorite feature is the conference rooms which she can utilize to complete her work.  Although the Lady Braves experienced a tough week of basketball with back-to-back losses, Rouse tried to help her team as much as possible. During their game against the University of Chicago (UIC), she performed really well with 11 points, 8 rebounds, and 4 assists. With these stats, she was named Ameren's Player of The Game. Alex seems to exceed both on the court...

 Update: Last week we talked about how exciting it was and the rush that the team felt from winning a game on the road with the blizzards afterward. Well, that did not happen again in the last road swing we had against Drake and the University of Nothern Iowa. The two best teams in the conference willingly beat any team that steps on their home court. How did the Braves do against them?  Our first game on the road was against Drake and at the beginning, things weren't looking too good. We came out down 12-20 in the first quarter and won the second quarter 17-15. After halftime, Drake came out with a head full of steam and we went on a bit of a scoring drought but not for long. We ended up losing the third and fourth quarter 31-36. A 60-71 loss to the best team in the league considering were 11th out of 12 teams in our conference isn't that bad for the Braves. Of course we would never want to settle for less but given our circumstance, we went out there and fought. As for the U...

I knew what the results were going to be. I knew the doctor would tell me I was out for the rest of the season. That's how bad the pain was that I was feeling. Nonetheless, I went in for the MRI test and got the results back immediately. Surprisingly they said everything was fine and my knee has improved from my previous surgery. Now you might think that's wonderful news but I was devastated. Those results mean that I'll continue to be in pain and there's no way to fix it. More up and down days. Days where I'd feel so bad that I could barely play. The question started to arise as to where do I go from here? The coaching staff has been my biggest supporters throughout this tough time. They've made it known that I'm not alone with the daily check-ins and finding solutions to keep me out on the court as much as possible. We came to the conclusion that my minutes within a game would be limited and I'm only allowed to practice Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. F...

     This past week I've been experiencing changes in my body that I'm extremely familiar with. Since high school, I've always had knee problems and they've seemed to get worse once I got to college. The summer of my sophomore year I finally got surgery and hoped that it solved all of my problems. It was broken off cartilage floating around so the doctor went in and cleaned everything up. The surgery wasn't a guarantee that I'll be perfectly fine from there on but it was a start. Me being optimistic I thought I could finally play basketball at my full potential. Given that I didn't play as much my freshman year and then going into my sophomore year I was recovering from the surgery, this year was supposed to be the year I could finally play healthy minutes.       With a starting position in the lineup this year, I've stepped into a new role, a new era of basketball for me. Finally getting comfortable with playing at a colligate level with high minutes,...

Hi there, I'm Nika Dorsey, and I'm here to share with you all a glimpse into the everyday life of a Division 1 athlete. To give you a brief overview of my background, I'm a junior studying social media marketing. I was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan (go lions!), and I have spent almost my whole childhood playing basketball. At Bradley University, I play women's basketball. We play teams in our conference at the highest level of collegiate basketball.  I will be using this platform to highlight all of the challenges, successes, failures, and more that most student athletes face.  As we compete in the Missouri Valley Conference with some of the top players in the country, we are often faced with many challenges. Our 1-6 conference record is a clear representation of how tough these teams are. We’ve faced our biggest upset against Illinois State in a 74-78 loss. We were fighting tooth and nail for the majority of the game and ended up falling short at the end. It was...