Oh how sweet it is..

As you all have known and heard, we are still dancin'!! This past week we traveled to York, PA which was about a 6.5 hour bus ride from good ole Berea, Ohio. The trip down wasn't too bad at all! We left on thursday morning, which caused us to have to miss classes thursday and friday; darn ;)  Many people had to take midterms and exams a day or two earlier and some even took them on the bus trip; this being a true testament to us being student-athletes!!

64 Teams
The first game against Lebanon Valley was a success. After a few "first-round"jitters, we got going and started to play like we are used to playing! After a solid defensive effort, we ended the 40 minutes of playing victorious with a final score of 66-48.After the game, and after everyone showered up, we stuck around to watch the first half of the York/LaRoche game to see who we would have to battle against on Saturday. After watching a few minutes, I knew we would have our hands full if York would win, and they did.

32 Teams
After shoot around in the morning, everyone was pretty excited to go out there and play. After all, we were the under dogs, the team that was suppose to lose, being 21-6 and playing at #10 York's home court, no one believed in us. But we did; and that's all that mattered on Saturday.
When the game started, we soon realized that the fouls weren't going how we "thought" they should be and we quickly had to gather ourselves and remind ourselves to be mentally tough. With just under 3 minutes to go, Larry went to the line to shoot foul shots and Aud and I stood back and just smiled... and realized if we did what we do for the last 2:55 of the game, we would be heading to the Sweet 16! With a crazy and scary ending to the game, and another solid team defensive performance (minus bow girl going off in the first half) we ended victorious with the final score of 67-52!

16 Teams
Facing the undefeated Fairleigh Dickinson on Friday is our next step. It's going to be a battle; we know that. Playing on their home court leaves us as the under dogs again and I couldn't be more excited that all of our dreams are coming true! 
I don't know what the future hold for this team; but what I do know, is that Baldwin Wallace is one of 16 teams left in the nation and no one on the outside believes that we can keep going...
That's what makes this journey all the more SWEET!

Never underestimate the heart of an underdog #RiseAbove

I hope that you all can tune in on Friday to watch/listen to us play and hopefully advance to the Elite 8! I want to thank everyone for their endless support throughout this entire season and I hope that we keep on putting on a good show for y'all!!

God Bless,

Shari Mangas #20 

Look Everyone, We're Dancing!

After a heart breaking loss to Capital in the semifinals of the OAC playoffs, we all thought it was over.  We had a one in 50 chance to receive an at-large bid into the NCAA tournament.  Monday, March 3, 2014, at precisely 2:30 in the afternoon, our team received the greatest news, we aren't done playing yet!  We received an at-large bid into the tournament along with three other OAC teams, which makes four teams from our conference going to the tournament.  The first round begins at five in York, Pennsylvania and we play Lebannon Valley.

We have felt what it is like to lose and think your season is over with.  We do not want to experience that feeling again anytime soon.  We have been given an amazing opportunity that we need to capitalize on this weekend.  This team has great potential and we all really enjoy playing with each other.  I cannot imagine another group of people I would love to experience this with.  We head to York, Pa Thursday morning and I cannot wait!

Here's to a long run in the tournament!

AWWWWW JACKETS!

Erin #14

The team rushing the court after our win, naming us OAC champs!

Just the beginning

Wow. Just wow. We are OAC SEASON CHAMPS.

Just let that sink in for a second.

Ok, now that you've rapped your head around that lets talk about tonight!
It's tournament time! We got a by for the first round so we get to start directly at the semi-finals which take place tonight!! We are playing Cap at home! This is about to be crazy!!! If you are anywhere in the area I would advise getting in your car right now and coming to Berea! We are taking the first steps in making history tonight and having a lot of fun while doing it.

I am so proud of my team and all the hard work and passion they have put into the game this year. I have never been apart of a team so passionate and focused on our goals, yet still so fun loving and chill. I can not wait to see how far we go. And one things for sure: I wouldn't want to go anywhere without these amazing teammates and coaches. Thank you to all our fans and everyone who believes in us.

This is a chance that we had taken from us last year, this year we take nothing for granted. Every moment, every game, even every sound of that annoying buzzer, we cherish as a team. Tonight is just the beginning of a new adventure!

Steph #12

Hey everyone!!

I hope you all have stayed as warm as you can during this crazy winter. The weather currently has a fever because it's been warmer than 20 degrees the past couple of days!

Anyways, I am writing this knowing we have only one more regular season game. It is crazy thinking that this season is almost done. It feels like just last week we were on our last day of pre-season. This year has been like a roller coaster, with many highs and some lows. It has been exciting, exhausting, fun, sad, and hard. But most importantly, it has been memorable. This team has experienced more than any other team I have been on. We have had the most ridiculous fun and entertaining moments, but we have also had moments where we have had each others backs. That's what a team is all about, right? Picking each other up when they are down? This team does that on a daily basis. All of my teammates mean something to me, and I am thankful for every single one of them. I am blessed to be a part of the Yellow Jacket Family.

ONE MORE GAME. (regular season that is). Just one. I know we will give it our all for our seniors :)

Audrey #24

"I can do all things through him who strengthens me." -Philippians 4:13

Time flies when you're having fun

Hey everyone!

I'm writing this in our last week of regular season!  It seems like yesterday we were getting up at 530 AM to run some sprints.  Now we are in our final week of the season, 2 games...6 days...  This is such an awesome but bittersweet fact.  Awesome because we are in control of our own destiny during these last 2 games, bittersweet because I never want the season to end.  We are in control of our destiny because if we win the next two games we stay on top the league going into the OAC tournament! We just have to play our game and focus on all the things that we do well.  If we do that, then we will be first in the regular season! I cannot wait to see what this week brings us! I don't want to get too far ahead of myself though, so our next game (Wednesday) is where the focus lies.  We can think about winning the league, senior day, and all of that starting on Thursday!

On another note, I have an internship with Camp Cheerful in Strongsville.  A big part of the internship is coaching a school-aged wheelchair basketball team.  I must say that the 12 kids that I coach have impacted my life in countless of ways.  The fact that they take their disabilities, throw them aside, and find a way to be competitive and active astounds me. We just had a home game and I was so glad that people got to see them in action!

Well....today we have a late practice, so I am going to try and get a nap in before practice!
Bye for now!
Lexi Rohrbach #45

Worst Snowday Ever

This message has been brought to you by the number one export of Lake Erie: Snow and 5 degree temperatures! So today at this exact moment we should have been starting our warm-up routine for the 3 pm game vs Capital, but it was postponed to 7 tonight and now has been officially moved to 3 pm tomorrow.  As much as I love the extra time to relax and do some homework I was pretty pumped to play Capital, and needless to say, am pretty upset that we aren't playing today.  It is hard to keep the excitement bottled up, but I've got to do it for just one more day.  The good thing is that I hear Monday and Tuesday are supposed to have bad weather too so hopefully we might get a day or two off! Fingers crossed.  Wear your pajamas inside out. Flush ice cubes down the toilet.  All that good stuff. 

In other news we went to Buca DiBeppo for dinner last night and then to Camp Cheerful.  We thought we were just going to go to Camp Cheerful but Coach surprised us by taking us to Buca first (yay thanks Coach)!  So yeah everyone who has blogged on time got to get dessert.  Which was prettttttty delicious.  I still have 'til tomorrow to blog, so I narrowly made the dessert cut.  The raspberry cheesecake was on point. :)  And then at Camp we helped the campers set up their beds and make crafts with them.  I made this pretty sweet giraffe with the most adorable girl named Marissa.  We called her Mo-Mo squared, like the Marissa on our team.  We then sat around the fireplace and sang songs.  One girl Katie sang Over The Rainbow, and it was amazing.  So overall it was a pretty good time.  It's always fun to go to Camp Cheerful and it really makes you appreciate everything you have been blessed with!  

Stay Classy San Diego!

-Larry

Lesson #1: No matter how polite you are, NEVER talk to the refs

Howdy followers!

The answer is no, you didn't read the title wrong. I learned a very, very valuable lesson on Wednesday; never talk to the refs. Even if you do use your manners. Especially when you're already angry and in the heat of the moment. Raising you voice isn't the best idea either. As you can assume, I received a technical in Wednesday's game at Heidelberg. Not one of my finer moments I might say. But to clear things up, it wasn't your typical cursing or throwing of the ball. After an and-1 call, I looked at the ref and said call them both ways, please (a little louder than just a friendly conversation). Nonetheless, I learned very quickly to never, EVER talk to the refs again. Luckily that didn't effect the outcome of the game and we left a very hostile environment with a W!

Last night the team went to Bucca to eat before we headed over to Camp Cheerful. Food is very important this team and whenever we can get around food, watch out. It's a free for all. Coach was even generous enough to order dessert and so there were about 4 different desserts rotating around; cheesecake, chocolate cake, apple cinnamon stuff, and last, but not least, Tiramisu. Tiramisu is the best creation, to me and Pup that is. We got to share the entire family size dessert to ourselves. Actually, she ate about 3/5 of it and I ate the other 2/5.

Hopefully everyone can come out tomorrow, SUNDAY, to see us play against our hated rivals, Capital. Because of the snow, our game got rescheduled for 3 oclock on Sunday. The season, thus far, has been pretty decent. Tomorrow we start the second round of the OAC and hopefully finish as well as we started! I just want to thank all of the continuous support we get from the community members, students, family members and staff!! It is greatly appreciated by each and every one of us!!

Stay warm and stay safe!! We look forward to seeing you all tomorrow!!
Aww Jackets!!

xoxo

Shari Mangas #20

Hey Everyone!
     Its Kenzie again :) Today is a big day for us.  We are taking on Capital University tonight at 7 now because the game was postponed till later.  This is a huge game today for us because they did beat us earlier in the year and now we are ready to not let it happen again!  Thank you to everyone who has been supporting us this year it has been so awesome to have all of you there. 
     This year has been a really new experience for me and I have loved it.  My teammates are so amazing and I wouldn't want to spend all my time with anyone else but them.  I can't wait to see what is in store for us in our future!  I hope to keep seeing tons of support the rest of the year and lets go kick Caps butt tonight!!! :)

THIS IS THE BEST WEEK EVER!

Hey everybody!

Contrary to popular belief the first week back has been AWESOME! First off, other students came back on campus so we have our wonderful fans back to watch us during our games.  On Tuesday, we had the JV game against Walsh and Coach Bailey told us we could get chalupas last year if we scored 100 on them.  Well to start off our fantastic week we scored 103 points.  Chalupas here we come!  Now the greatness doesn't stop there! During practice that day we got FT4D (free throws for dinner), which is where each person has to make a free throw and we did it!  But again, the greatest does not stop there!  We played the previously ranked number one John Carroll, but we knocked them off.  We had amazing fans come out and support us during our big game.  It was an amazing experience to be apart of.  Everyone was excited and ready to play a great game.  Now, you would think that is quite a great week but my story only goes up to Wednesday, it only gets better.  On Thursday, we got ready for our next game against Muskie.  Friday, we celebrated our FT4D and had an amazing dinner at Moosehead.  It was awesome, Coach G even made fun of Allyson, twice! Team bonding is always fun because our team gets along very well with one another.  A big thanks goes out to Coach Harrer for the amazing dinner!  And after dinner me, Ally, and Steph got sweet teas to finish off a great meal.  Now on to Saturday!  We went to Muskie and dominated.  We ended an amazing week with a solid win against a good team.  A win on the road is always a challenge but we showed up determined to get the win.  Now ladies, let's make this next week even better!

Love always!
Erin #14

ps. A special shoutout goes to all of our fans who support us during our games, it really means a lot to each and everyone of us!

AWWWWWWWW JACKETS!

Our Year

Hello everybody! I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas and a Happy New Year! I definitely enjoyed time with my family but I was excited to get back onto the court and continue chasing that ring! Just like everybody else has said, we are ready for Otterbein tomorrow and I cannot wait to get another W :) To switch it up a bit, I'm going to give you readers ten reasons why you should choose us Yellow Jackets to win the OAC! :)

1. We have the most competitive team between coaches and 19 players.
2. Like coach always says.. "pick your poison" because we have three people in double digits right now and two with 9.8 or 9.9, so basically we're unstoppable
3. We're deeper on the bench than any team in the OAC, which again makes us hard to guard
4. Between Alissa and Shari, no guard has a better outside shot than those two.
5. Our coaches spend hours watching film and us players take about an hour to go over scout to make sure we're prepared
6. Since the beginning of season we have not had a bad practice, we come prepared to get better everyday
7. As a team, we set goals and standards for ourselves and each other and everybody remains accountable to them.
8. There are always girls coming early to practice or staying after to work on their game; it's never just come to practice right on time and leave as quickly as possible. We put in extra time willingly and we're there to get better.
9. The ban was tough on the girls last year, making us want to play even better and harder this year.
10. Basically, we just want it more than everybody else.

I hope this helps you readers believe in us and see how badly we want to win! Well, until next time!
Megs :)

New Year, Same Team

Hello my little Lady Jacket fans! Alissa Munro here, comin' at ya from the new year. I hope everyone's Christmas and New Year has been one for the books - I know mine was :)

This has been the first week of practice back from our break, and thankfully no one has died. We came back and picked up where we left off - be ready for a show against Otterbein tomorrow. We just had a friendly (for the most part) intrasquad scrimmage to get back in the game flow. It was the sophomores vs. everyone else. I know you're thinking what we were -- the sophomore squad won right? Wrong. But it was a close game! It would have been nice to have proven once and for all that our class is the best, but there will be more opportunities. Coach Bailey was our ref and he basically gave the game to the other team. I guess it's just sophomore squad against the world . No worries though, no hard feelings.......

Anyways, our days are pretty boring here. Just so you can see how boring, here's the daily schedule:
11:00 - wake up, eat
12:30 - see if Coach Bell changed her hair again
1:00 - practice
4:00 - eat lunch, then take a nap
6:00 - wake up, eat dinner
8:00 - watch movies and make fun of Megan

There you go folks - an inside look inside the crazy life of BW women's basketball. I look forward to seeing you all at our upcoming games. Come say hi!

Alissa #13

Ring Chasing

Hello followers!

I'm Allyson Helleis, a sophomore that has not bogged in awhile but I'm back!! There is so much that has happened since the last time I blogged! We are currently still on winter break, but we have a huge conference game tomorrow against Otterbein, that we have been preparing for this past week in practice. For having a week off and coming back to a full week of practice I was rather impressed with the team and how well we have been practicing, our determination this year is something I've never experienced before and is honestly thrilling!

Thus far, the season has been going extremely well. We have a winning record of 8-2 and our schedule has been pretty tough. The team has been playing united and it truly feels like we are a family. I am looking forward to see what the rest of the season has to offer for us, especially because we are working our butts of to get that championship ring for the OAC.

I think I speak for the whole team when I say I don't want school to start anytime soon! How much better does it get than sleeping, eating, playing basketball and hanging out with your teammates and watching Netflix everyday for about a month. Not having to worry about classes is definitely an amazing feeling!

I hope everyone had a happy holiday season and a great New Year as we are looking to bring in the New Year with our first win of 2014 against Otterbein!

Until next time,

Allyson Helleis  #5