Choice Not Chance by Joanne P. McCallie & Rob Rains

Author:Joanne P. McCallie & Rob Rains
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2012-01-11T00:00:00+00:00

Team in Transition

Our team was transitioning at this time, too, after losing Cindy to the professional ranks. I was happy for her; she was headed to her new life in Cleveland, and I knew her success at the next level would produce only more recognition for her and support for our program.

I wasn’t really worried about how we were going to replace Cindy. We had a corps of good players, and I expected us to be as competitive as we had been during the years that Cindy and our other senior, Sandi Carver, were there.

Of course, expectations are fleeting. No coach really knows what is going to happen once the ball is tossed in the air, which is what makes every sport exciting. All I wanted for our team that season, as I do in any year, was to play as well as we could play and see how far it would take us.

I think the players carried a little extra motivation with them into the season, too; they wanted to prove that we had been more than a one-person team during the previous four years. That kind of attitude can be a good and healthy thing for any group, team, or company.

We could not have played much better during the league schedule. We won 17 out of 18 games, losing only at Northeastern, and headed into the postseason conference tournament with a great deal of confidence. We advanced to the finals, but then suffered a tough 57 to 55 loss to Northeastern again.

The serious result of the loss in the tournament finals meant that we would not be awarded the league’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. For the first time, we were relying on the selection committee to reward our great season (23 and 6) with an at-large bid. Since it would be the first ever for a team in our conference, I was not certain it would happen. I was hopeful, but tried to remain realistic about our chances when thinking about all of the teams that wanted one of those bids.

The team really didn’t know what to expect when we gathered to watch the selection show. I would not have been greatly surprised if we’d been left out entirely. As it was, we had to wait until almost the end of the show—the next to last team announced—before we found out we had made it. The feeling in the room went from low to incredibly high. Everybody was jubilant, crying, and hugging each other. The end result didn’t really make much sense; not only were we picked, we received the highest seed ever in our five consecutive trips to the tournament. We were the number 10 seed and a first-round matchup against Stanford in Norfolk, Virginia.

In retrospect, I think the fact that we were selected as an at-large team instead of earning the automatic bid kind of raised our spirits a little bit. We knew we had been given a second chance. Everyone was acting silly at practice the next day, still celebrating the bid, and I had to come down hard on them.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.