Happy Holidays from San Antonio!!!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS to everyone!!! We are in San Antonio for the Texas Challenge and it has been AWESOME!!! This has been a great trip because we have been able to experience San Antonio; come closer as a team because of all the quality time we have spent together; and last night we won our first game of the Texas Shootout against the host team, Trinity, who was 7-1 coming into the game.

We flew down to San Antonio on Saturday. The trip included a layover in Charlotte and ironically enough, we ran into a BW alum in the airport. It seems like wherever we go we run into BW alumni. The plane trip itself was interesting as 3 of our players were on their first plane trip ever. I must say I was very impressed with how they handled their first time in the air! Arriving in San Antonio was an event in itself as our car rental company didn’t have the vans that we reserved, so we spent about 2 hours figuring out just how to get from the airport to the hotel. It was definitely a good lesson in being able to handle adversity and overcome it : )

On Sunday we had a great practice and then had the rest of the day to ourselves. Everyone went downtown and enjoyed all the sights and scenes of San Antonio. We got to see everything that the city of San Antonio had to offer: the River Walk, the Alamo, the Tower of the Americans, and the Alamo Dome. The city was definitely buzzing as the Alamo Bowl took place last night and both Missouri and Northwestern football teams and fans were here the entire time. Throw on top of that the fact that the national high school all star game is happening this week, and you can see there were a LOT of people in the city of San Antonio this week!

Monday was filled with more things to do. We had our morning shoot-around and followed that up with an alumni reception. The reception was really neat because the team got to meet a lot of BW alum that live in Texas. The great thing about that, plus meeting the alum in Charlotte, is that it is proof to the student-athletes of how far stretching the BW alumni network is, which is very important when looking for jobs when they get out of school.

The alumni ended up taking things one step further as they showed up for our game that night at Trinity. That was really neat for the team as we had our very own “Jacket Junkies” section all the way down in Texas : ) It turned out to be awesome for us as we played a VERY energized game and beat a very good team. We’re hoping that we build some good momentum from this whole experience as we head into conference play after the break. Our motto was that a new season has begun, so as far as we are concerned, we are undefeated right now : ) This trip has been awesome so far and we’re hoping to finish it off tonight with a 2-0 record in the Challenge! AWWW JACKETS!!!

Coach Strickland

Opening Weekend in New Jersey

As the semester winds down, we are all busy with projects, papers, preparing for finals, and of course preparing for some tough upcoming games. We haven’t had a game since our opening tournament in New Jersey a little over a week ago, but we have been working very hard in practice. New Jersey, by the way, was a ton of fun!! We definitely had some quality team bonding time on the 8 hour bus drive there and back!!
Anyway, after we beat Salisbury that Saturday, Coach let us go into NYC! :)

On our drive in, we saw the Statue of Liberty from afar, but our first adventure was taking the subway into the Big Apple. Most of us have never been to New York before so it was such an amazing experience. It was overwhelming to see how many people were roaming around and crowding into the subway. The City is just so big and there’s so much going on that it was hard to focus and take it all in! It’s hard for me to even try to explain how much fun we had! Anyway, our team obviously needed food (the usual us! Surprise, surprise… :]) so we decided to eat at ESPN Zone in Times Square. While we waited to be seated, our amazing tour guide, Max (a B-W grad who teaches out in New Jersey and came to support us at our games), showed us around the streets of NY and Times Square.
We saw where the ball drops on New Years, the Empire State Building, the TRL Studio, the famous Macy’s, and every typical building in NYC. After walking around for about 45 minutes, we finally got to eat! ;] The food was amazing and we really had a good time. After dinner, we headed back to the subway under The Garden!! (Madison Square Garden, that is!) for our ride back to the hotel! Sadly, our Big Apple adventure had ended and we needed to get some quality rest for the championship game on Sunday.
We ended up losing to Kean University that Sunday, and although we wished the outcome of that game was different, we really had a fabulous time together! After such an amazing experience, it was back to work when we got back to Ohio. All of us girls have really been working hard to get better this past week of practice. Only a few more practices until our next opponent, Washington & Jefferson, and we can’t wait to compete again. The season has been so much fun thus far. All of us girls get along great which always seems to make every experience one hundred times better!! Now it’s time to get some work done before practice, Awww jackets!!!

Amanda Mondrach senior guard #25

TIME IS FLYING!

We just finished our second week of practice. In exactly two weeks from tonight we will have played our first two games. We have so much to improve before that time! Division III basketball is tough for coaches in that we don't get time to work on individual skills with our players until we start our team practice. We also feel some pressure at Baldwin-Wallace in trying to live up to our great tradition each and every year. We have 13 straight seasons of 18 or more wins and 11 of those 13 have been 20 wins or more. Our players do a great job of giving us the effort needed to meet our lofty goals each year. Of course, our players feel ready to play tomorrow and our coaching staff feels we need another month! Ready or not, here it comes!

It's Here!

Practice started yesterday. As head coach, I always feel a bit overwhelmed this time of year about all that we have to get taught before our first game. But as I tell how players...how do you eat an elephant??? One bite at a time! When there is so much to do that it you don't know what to do first, you just start biting off bits of that big ol' elephant. So that's just what we did today in practice.
I was very pleased with our progress from day 1 to day 2. Of course we have a long way to go, but the team is really focused on what we're asking them to do and they're working hard. They're fun to coach because they keep it fun, encouraging and helpful for each other, while at the same time they compete hard. We have a day off from practice tomorrow and we'll come back on Wednesday and look to keep improving.

Old friends and great tradition

This past weekend was Homecoming at B-W. It's my favorite time - spending time with our former players! They are all so successful, and it makes me proud to know they are graduates from our program. Our theme on the T-shirts this year was Tradition Never Graduates. I also love that our current players get a chance to meet some of the great players that went before them.
Of the 13 players shown, 7 of them are teaching and coaching now. Others are a Physical Therapist, Regional Sales Manager, Director of Communications with NACDA, or in graduate school. Julie Work, one of our former All-Americans, was inducted into the B-W Athletic Hall of Fame this weekend as well.

Supporting others

Our team has been working to show their school spirit through their support for their fellow athletes. Here are members of our team at a recent soccer game. The weather was great and our team always has fun just being together! AWWWW JACKETS!

Creating fun!

Wow is the time going quickly! Our team certainly has a lot of personality this year. If you notice the picture, they're all dressed in their "favorite color." It seems to be a fashion faux pas to wear the same color of short and shirt. I have no idea because I'm very fashion challenged! Anyway, they decided to all dress that way and called it Favorite Color Day. Too funny. This team definitely finds ways to have fun.

It was a great weekend here at B-W. It was Community Day as well as Parent's weekend so there was a lot of great activity going on. Our team helped set up the tables and chairs for the Community Day event. We set up 3,000 chairs in about an hour and 15 minutes at 9:00 on Saturday. Then, the football team came from behind to win in the last few minutes so it capped off a beautiful day in a great way!

Players are getting ready!

We're very fortunate to have a lot of players who are motivated to work hard on their own. In division 3, pre-season work-outs are voluntary and open to anyone who wants to participate. The players know the season is right around the corner and are working hard to prepare themselves for that first day. The picture shows some of them in the weight room.

Getting organized

It's amazing how quickly the time goes in the pre-season. It's exciting to order the new shoes, practice gear and such each year as it means the season will be here before we know it. Our returning players love the new freshmen, which always makes a coach's life easier! I'm also thrilled that our study tables have been very focused - the players come in and get right to work and are getting a lot done. Great job ladies!

Start of a New School Year

We had our first meeting to get organized for the year with study table and NCAA paperwork. The first meeting is always kind of boring, yet really exciting because it means the start of a brand new season. As the head coach, it's always great to see all of our returners again, as well as the new faces that are joining us. Each team is unique and you always wonder what the new year will bring...what memories will be created. There are always fun ones, sad ones, exciting ones - same emotions but VERY different experiences! I look forward to what this season holds. On paper, we may be rebuilding a bit after the graduation of some great players. On the other hand, if our players have worked hard to improve over the summer, it could be another fun year! We'll see what happens!