Women's Basketball Talks About Midseason

The past week of practice was another competitive, tough week of practice.  We played Earlham and Hanover, and spilt by defeating Earlham but coming up just a little short to Hanover, who is tied for number one in the conference. Competing with number one in the conference showed us that we should be able to compete and win against any team in our conference. This week is expected to be like the last few – very intense practices preparing us extremely well for our upcoming games with Anderson at home on Wednesday, and making the trip to Lexington on Saturday to play Transylvania, which are both winnable games for us.  At this time in the season every game is important as we just began the second half of league play.
Blog by: Brooke Zachrich, Megan Fields, Jesse Arnold

Women's Basketball Talks About the Start of 2012

After a long Christmas break, we are back in basketball action! It wasn’t easy getting back into the gym, but we all worked hard the first three days back with conditioning and shooting so we were ready for our first game of the year. 

We all knew it was going to be a tough game because our first game of 2012 was against our long-time rival Bluffton.  However, we prepared for them like we would any other team. 

On game day, every one was excited to get the game started. Our main goal was to get our enthusiasm up during our warm up and let it carry through the entire game.  Luckily, we were able to do that throughout the entire 40 minutes.  We started a little slow but quickly picked up our defense, which allowed us to get multiple “one and done” situations, and then take it to them on offense.  It was a team effort that kept us going offensively and defensively during the entire game, and we were able to come away with a W!  This was special for us because Brooke has never won at Bluffton the past 3 years of her career; however, we changed that for her senior year. 

On Thursday before practice, we went to St. John UCC right next to our gym and did “backpack buddies” as a team service project.  This is the second time this year we have helped with backpack buddies.  What we do is fill backpacks with different food items that will be delivered to multiple schools throughout Defiance County to students whose families are less fortunate.  After a short practice, we were lucky to have a couple Marines come to our gym and work with us on how to be good leaders. 

First, we discussed 12 leadership words that the Marines use to determine who will make future officers, and we were able to relate them to being a leader on a team.  Words such as Justice, Dependability, Bearing, Integrity and Unselfishness are a few examples.

Next, we split into two groups and did multiple exercises where one person in each group had a chance to lead the group.  We finished the day doing team exercises where Brooke was our leader.  Afterwards, we all realized that every single person on our team has the ability to be a leader on our team, and we all bring something different as a leader.  Not only did we learn about leadership, but the Marines said they could tell that we were a very close team.  It was another team building opportunity that we all had fun with. 

Now it is back to business to get ready for our next game again Transylvania, which is Saturday.  It’s time to finish the season strong and hopefully finish as one of the top teams in the conference.

Blog by: Kim Comden, Emma Starks, Kim Bingley

Returning Players Talk About Start of the Season.

This last week the Defiance College Women’s Basketball team played Hope College on Tuesday, November 22^nd, before a four day Thanksgiving break. We were hoping to give number 19 in the nation a fight this year, as we prepared with a few practices following the Tip Off Tournament at Washington and Jefferson College.  Hope College came out aggressive right at the tip, and took away our offense and forcing turnovers. We went into halftime down 40-14, but we didn’t give up and came back the second half and outscored Hope by one, 29-28.

Our record going into Thanksgiving break was 1-3. We are looking to improve every day and practice and get better one step at a time to reach our potential. We had four days off for Thanksgiving break and to spend with our families and off our legs.  We start league play this coming week at Franklin College and with Rose-Hulman on Saturday at home.

Blog by Kim Bingley, Brooke Zachrich and Maggie Neanen

Freshmen Talk About Adjusting to College

With the season quickly approaching and the first semester nearly completed, it’s been a busy time for the Yellow Jackets.  As freshmen, we are adjusting well to the changes both academically and athletically, and rising to the challenge.  After nearly a month of practice, we are developing skills that the upperclassmen are already profound in, but we are doing our best to catch up and make a difference. 

As expected, college life is vastly different than high school.  Being more independent for ourselves and needing to quickly mature into responsible adults creates a barrier for us, not to mention throwing in a collegiate sport.  But we are all learning how to cope with this issue and successfully become profound college student-athletes.

There have been a few injuries for us along the way, but we are correctly treating them to get back on the court as quickly as possible.  We are all working extremely hard to make a difference on the team in hopes to gain some recognition for our efforts and earn playing time.  We all provide different skills to our team, so together we are a pretty strong unit of players. 

We are all extremely excited for the lid lifter that will be our inaugural college basketball game, setting the tone for the next four years of our careers.  We are pretty nervous for this experience, but our teammates have played a large role in helping us make the adjustment.  We are an extremely close-nit team, and they all have provided us with encouragement and advice to help us reach our full potential. 

Blog by Freshman Jessie Arnold, Megan Fields, Megan Zachrich

Lady Jackets Blog After Win at Manchester

After coming off a big road win against Rose-Hulman, we continued working hard to prepare for Anderson. We trailed the Ravens the entire game until the final seconds. With 20 seconds on the clock, we did not lose hope, even though we trailed by five points. We stayed calm even with the final seconds and managed to get a steal and score a last-second bucket for the win. 

We did not perform the way we did in the Anderson game against conference-leader, Hanover. We had a rough time starting off the game with the Panthers having a ten point lead in the first five minutes. Although it was one of Defiance’s best offensive games of the season, posting 91 points, it was not enough to defeat the Panthers. We did a nice job on the glass as well, out-rebounding the conference’s best rebounding team by a count of 41-38.

Playing on Thursday after all the snow, we were able to go to Manchester and knock them off 85-76 in a game we led the entire way. The win improved our record in the HCAC to 7-6.

Rachel Ciminillo, Hannah Davis, Alex Shuster

Lady Jackets Eye Matchup with Rival, Bluffton University

After coming off of a great win against Mount St. Joe, we could not celebrate too long because we had to prepare for Earlham. Even though Earlham is ranked last in our league we knew as a team we could not take them lightly and we had to be ready. On Wednesday, Jan. 12, we played Earlham at home.

We came out strong and finished the first half with an 18-point lead after shooting 64.0 percent from the floor. In the second half, we came out a little dull and let Earlham back in the game, but they only came within nine points with nine minutes left in the game. We went on a run and pulled away with the win with a score of 100-83. Our team finished the night with a 55.0 shooting percentage, which was the team’s best since December of 2004. After this game our league record became 4-3.

On January 15, we traveled to Franklin College for our next league matchup. We started the game off exchanging lead changes, but towards the end of the half we struggled with our free throws, going four-for-13, which caused us to be down by four at half time. At the half our team talked about making free throws, attacking Franklin’s defense and stopping them from penetrating in the middle of our defense.

Down by four with five minutes left in the game, we let up and took ourselves out of the game. Turnovers contributed to our 73-60 loss to a very good team in our conference. We know we can not dwell on our loss at Franklin, because we had to start preparing ourselves for our archrival, Bluffton University.

Brooke Zachrich, Nia Banks, Maggie Neanen, Erica King

Lady Jackets Blog Midway through their 2010-11 Campaign

The past few weeks of winter break, we have been working a lot on our defense and transition offense. That work played an important part in our win against Wooster on Dec. 30. Because of our tight defense, we held them to 38 points.

We then wanted to carry that over to our first conference game back from winter break with Transylvania. We came out shooting cold for the second game in a row, and that played a big role in our conference loss to Transy. This was a tough loss for us, but we came back into practice and worked exceptionally hard to prepare for our next conference matchup at Mount St. Joe. 

We traveled to MSJ wanting nothing but a victory, and that’s what we got. We trailed by single digits most of the game, and with under a minute to go we got our first lead and held on for a big road win. Our conference record on the road is now 3-0. Our next game is on Wednesday against a newcomer to our league, Earlham College. We are looking to win our first home conference game of the season and bump our conference record to 4-3.

In the past few weeks we have had a lot of free time with it being winter break, and being the only people on campus. We have used this time for team bonding and getting to know each other better. We also have eaten at the President of Defiance College’s house two times. It was nice to get off campus and enjoy some great food!  

The team had an outstanding 3.17 grade point average last semester, and with classes starting this week, hopefully we can do just as well or even better this spring semester!

Brooke Zachrich, Nia Banks, Maggie Neanen, Erica King