Thoughts of a D1 Athlete

  What's going on with the Bradley Women's Basketball team?  After a struggling season, a lot of players were faced with the question of whether should they stay or should they go. Many thought long and hard and others knew exactly what they wanted. Each player had an end-of-the-year meeting with the coaches where they told them whether they were entering the portal or not. Many left out of the office with tears and others with excitement for their upcoming future. Although I chose to stay, I'm extremely proud of all of the girls who impacted our team and plan on doing that elsewhere as well. Reagan Barkema, a knockdown shooter from Iowa has the most sweetest and genuine heart. When it comes to competing, she wants to help her teammates in every way possible to achieve success. Whether that's in the game knocking down 3's and snagging rebounds or simply coaching them up from the bench. Isis Fitch is the most competitive and hardworking player I've run into durin...

       Here's a picture from our senior night to once again highlight our amazing seniors! Once again, congratulations, and we wish them the best in their upcoming chapter. I appreciate you all!      To honor the best athletes in our conference, the MVC hosted a formal event. Following a delicious dinner, they presented us with a number of awards for various accomplishments, including the All-Defensive team, the Scholar-Athlete award, the All-Newcomer team, and many more. Halli Poock, who was named to the third team and All-Freshman team, performed impressively for the Braves. Despite not receiving any recognition at the banquet, Callie was awarded the State Farm Good Neighbor award and placed third among Scholar-Athletes. Her work in the classroom has established her as a standout student within the MVC. Majoring in education, Callie adores the children!      We had another chance to secure our place in the MVC tournament on March 14th ...

 The Lady Braves take on the Belmont Bruins in the Renaissance Coliseum today at 6:00 p.m. We lost our most recent game against them, 47-89. The shoot-around we did that day gave us a good idea of how the game would play out. Coach Pop kept bringing up how uninspiring the energy was. The fact that we were 5-21 in the first quarter is proof enough that we were unprepared. We haven't played well in the first quarter since that game. But when asked, we never know what the problem is, so we go into a hole from which we can never escape. Aside from the game, we had a great time when we traveled to Nashville. Bradley supporters Dave and Amy DeFreitas invited us for a team dinner and following the team went downtown to explore Nashville. It was a beautiful site to see and the food was amazing.  The Murray State Racers will be the next team we will welcome on Saturday at 2pm in the Renaissance Coliseum. We are honoring our four seniors, Ruba, Daija, Isis, and Tete, with this ver...

 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...