Midnight Madness approaching

Midnight Madness is this Friday and that means the college basketball season has finally arrived!

Hello for the first time this year. For any new students or staff that read this, I am a junior on the women’s basketball team and I have been given the opportunity to write a season-long blog for The Phoenix. I wrote a bit last year, and I truly enjoy giving Phoenix readers a little insight into my team.

Things are different this year because we have a new coaching staff: LaToya Howell and Clare Bodensteiner are additions to our coaching staff. They both have experience at the Division I level; coach Howell played at Nebraska and coach Clare was at Stanford. Those are pretty big names in women’s basketball so it has been a pleasure to learn from them thus far. We’re so glad they are contributing to the thoughts of Jenny Callan, Brent Brown and our new Head Coach Eric Simpson. Coach Callan, Brown and Simpson were on staff last year and the whole team is so excited they returned. We are anxious to begin the year and even more excited that Midnight Madness symbolizes the ending of our pre-season workouts.

Conditioning has been extremely tough this year, no lie. We have done a lot of workouts on the track, in the gym and on the field to improve our teams defensive effort. And I think that those workouts have definitely been beneficial. Regardless of how much better those workouts are going to make us come game time, we are happy to be done with them. Finally, we will get to play more basketball. As a team we are in the best shape I’ve ever seen us and I can’t stress how ready we are to start working.

School has been pretty cool too; I am really enjoying my classes this semester. I am studying journalism and my classes are pretty interesting. We all have been putting in a lot of work to be a step ahead for November when we start playing games. As I stated last season, we are definitely the underdogs and have no other choice but to work hard. So I ensure you that’s what we have been doing.

Hope to see you Friday night in Gentile for Midnight Madness. Even though it is called “Midnight Madness,” it starts at 10:00 p.m. So please come out and support the men’s and women’s basketball teams. There will be free shirts, prizes and maybe some food. Don’t quote me on the last one, but all of the players will definitely be present. Highlights will surely be the dunk contest and 3-point shootout between the men’s and women’s teams. I don’t know who I will pick for the dunk contest because I was pulling for sophomore Jordan Hicks, who is unfortunately injured, but my money is on senior Maggie McCloskey in the 3-point contest, representing the women! She hasn’t lost yet. See you there.

Peace and Much Love, Taryn Randle #22.