The Weekly Albertan

As I am typing this it is 7:30 am in Toronto- and 5:30 am in Calgary. I am at the Toronto airport because my family is taking a trip to the Dominican Republic this Christmas holiday. I have finished my classes a week early (journalism has no final exams yay!) and now I am writing my final blog to you.

I had planned on finishing my blogs sooner, but as all college students can tell you, procrastination is a life skill. As soon as I finish writing this blog I will have the next month to do absolutely, wonderfully NOTHING!

Of course, I will need to stay in shape during my holiday. I am a little nervous about being able to do this because I never feel the urge to run in tropical heat! Hopefully I will be able to force myself into staying fit for the next semester.

I hope you have enjoyed reading my blog and maybe learned a few things about being a student-athlete at SAIT. I hope you all have a wonderful vacation from school and/or work and if you are in the Calgary area definitely come and check out a game sometime! Our first season game in the next semester will be on Saturday, Jan. 16 at SAIT against the MRU Cougars. Be there at 6 p.m. to see my amazing team play!

This year my team has only lost one game to Lethbridge Community College. All of our other games have been wins, most of them won by over 20 points. The game lost against Lethridge was a necessarily lesson to teach us we can be beat if we do not come to play. If we do come to play, I feel like no one can touch us. My team this year has incredible talent and amazing athleticism. We have the opportunity, and the responsibility to ourselves, to be one of the top teams in Canada. I think we should be the national champions if we play to our potential.

Currently, we are ranked 2^nd in all of the CCAA (Canadian College Athletic Association) and first in the ACAC (Alberta College Athletic Council). Statistically, we have players in the top 5 standings in all the statistics taken by the ACAC. This is in shooting, rebounding, assists and steals.

Reflecting on this makes me feel pretty excited to see what we can do in the next semester. Our goal is to be undefeated in the rest of the season.

Last year my team went to play a tournament in Halifax. This was my first time on the East coast of Canada and I was surprised at the beauty of the city. I love the ocean so being beside one is always nice! I barely remember how much success my team had at the tournament but I definitely remember the trip as a great time to grow with my team and to see some beautiful sights.

This year my team went to Vancouver during the Thanksgiving weekend and played a tournament against other B.C. colleges.  We left the tournament undefeated so we definitely stayed focused on basketball. On our downtime we went shopping on Robson Street and were able to walk along the ocean at Stanley Park. For a few girls on my team this was the first time they stepped into an ocean so that was pretty cool to see!

As an athlete my best memories are playing basketball in new places. It is always so interesting to see the sights of a new city, but also play players from different areas. There is always some kind of different style of play to every new place you go.

After speaking with these coaches you will be able to see what schools may suit you most and also see what type of players each team is looking for.

Once you have contacted a coach they will want to see you play. This may be by coming to one of your games or they may ask for a few game tapes of you playing. It is good to have game tapes ready to send off to college coaches, especially if you are living far away from the school of your choice.

You will likely be asked to show up at the ID camp, which is basically the tryout for the team, but not the official tryout that will probably be held on one of the first days of your college team’s practice. At the ID camp you will see players that are currently on the college team and also other potential players. After the ID camp the coach will probably let you know if he or she wants you to play for their team in the next season.

A few tips for ID camps:

-If you have not yet met the coach face-to-face do so. If you already know the coach make sure you say hello.

- Always hustle. A player that is quick up and down the court, aggressive on defense and capable of getting rebounds will always stand out.

- If you are given advice on something to improve your game by a coach make sure you take that advice. This will show you are coachable and have a good attitude- Two attributes that are definitely a plus in your coach’s eyes.

- Showcase YOUR skills. Whatever you are best at, make sure this is what you are doing. In the scrimmage if you can play full court defense do it, if you can shoot 3 point shots do it. If these things are not your forte don’t force it!

-Keep a good attitude!!!!

Hopefully this will help you out! Remember there are a lot of colleges out there so don’t give up if your first school is not interested in you! Also, playing as a red-shirt ( a player which will practice with the team for the year but not play in games) is not a bad option- you will not lose a year of eligibility doing this.

The basketball teams play almost every weekend with the women’s game at 6 p.m. and the men’s game at 8 p.m.  Each weekend we also play one home game and one away game. This means if we were playing Medicine Hat and we played them at home on Friday we would be playing in Medicine Hat Saturday.

As you can imagine this equates to a lot of travel, and therefore a lot of bus rides.

As athletes at SAIT we take a bus that is similar to a Grey Hound bus. There is a bathroom at the back and 2 seats on each side of an aisle. The men’s basketball team sits on the left side of the bus and my team and I sit on the right side.

Rookies need to double up and sit beside each other, and there is usually space for everyone else to sit by themselves.

On the way to games many players will be found sleeping and listening to their Ipods but there is also usually some sort of movie playing. On the way back there is always a movie playing and usually some sort of card game, such as crib or Taboo being played.

Some movies we have seen so far this year on the bus were:

-Step Brothers

-The Hangover (my personal bus ride favorite!!! SO FUNNY!!!!)

-Glory Road

- A few horror movies

- Tropic Thunder

-Zombieland

- There definitely were more but for some reason I can’t remember them now…

My necessities for bus rides:

-water

- a lot of snacks

- a pillow

- a jacket

-I pod

-I usually bring homework, which looking back is pointless because I never, ever do it on the bus

-magazine to read

-basketball gear

Overall, riding the bus is not a bad experience unless you just lost a game in someone else’s gym because this will make for a quiet and sulky bus ride. In these cases it is best to sit quiet and perhaps go to sleep.

8:30 am- Roll out of bed to go to my 9 am class. I am not impressed with the amount of sleep I had. Hop in the shower. Get dressed etc. to get ready for the day. Grab a couple pieces of toast and run out the door. I am inevitably 5 minutes late for my class.

9:30 am-I am in my first class of the day. I have some strange addiction to Facebook, although there is nothing on it worth looking at on it I probably feel like I can listen to my teacher and look at my friend’s pictures at the same time.

10:00 am- We are assigned a news story to write. It’s going to be about 500 words and about a topic of my choice. What to write about? I can guarantee I won’t make up my mind until 3 days before it is do, making me more stressed when I am trying to get interviews with people that will not call me back.

11:00 am- One more hour of class…

12:00 pm- Lunch break. Eat a sandwich and hang out with friends from my class.

1:00 pm- Another class that goes until 3:00 pm.

3:00- Go to shoot for an hour before practice starts.

4:00-6:00 pm- Basketball practice. For 2 hours I am totally focused on playing hard against my team mates.

6:00-7:00 pm- Go work out at Peak Power, where SAIT athletes work on their strength and speed with weight training.

7:00 pm- Leave the gym and walk back to Residence. Make and eat dinner, most likely this will be pasta, as I am a horrible cook.

Chill out for a while and watch TV. Maybe do some homework.

11:00 pm- start thinking about going to sleep.

11:45- Finally fall asleep.

The plan was to do a clinic for the junior high students at Red Deer Lake School. For those of you that do not know where Red Deer Lake School is, it is no where close to Red Deer. It is, in fact, close to Spruce Meadows. We were supposed to show up at the school at 6 p.m. so I figured leaving at 4:30 would be plenty of time. We packed my car with 5 of us and headed out.

I guess I forgot I live in an INSANE province. It’s cold and roads are crazy. I really am not scared of driving in winter-that is not what I am talking about. I am talking about the fact that it took two and a half hours to get somewhere that should have taken less than an hour to get to. So, my team and I show up at 7 p.m. with only an hour left to coach. I was, to say the least, a little upset about it- considering I have more homework at this time than I have ever seen in my life. But, I think the kids we were coaching got something out of and I really enjoy seeing kids improve their skills, so in the end I was not too upset. Plus, we were fed with free pizza at the end of it so it wasn’t all bad!

On the way back we ended up blasting Christmas carols and getting back to SAIT in good time. I still needed to finish doing a lot of homework that night so it was a little crazy!

Our other volunteer project was to paint Elanor’s House, a house where teens and young adults can live to provide a safe environment free of sexual exploitation.

Britt Pekar and Michaela Allen paint as Coach M looks on.

Rachel Niven and Claire Nesbitt paint at Elanor's house.

Hopefully our two volunteer projects this past week have benefited others! I know it is so cliché to say that volunteering makes you feel good but it’s true. As a student athlete we rarely have extra time to volunteer but I would like to do more of it when the season starts.

Some of the greatest moments I have experienced, the moments I live for as an athlete, have happened on the basketball court.

It all starts with warming up before a game. Listening to some mixed CD created by a team mate that has the typical “pump up” music (mostly hip hop) that gets the team going.  As I sing along I think about what I want out of this game. I will play hard defense, run the court fast on offence and out-rebound the top rebounder on the opposite team.

I am excited to play the other team, and they are definitely pumped up too….everyone wants the chance to knock down the team ranked 2^nd in all of Canada and see us fall. I know that if my team plays to our potential and is not out-worked this will not happen.

We run through the warm-up: shooting, passing, defensive shuffle and end with 2 on 3. Now there are 3 minutes left before the game begins and my team mates and I all circle together. We all huddle-up and talk about what we are going to do to the other team. I can’t tell you EXACTLY what we say, but it goes along the lines of “Let’s dominate those other girls” but a little bit more aggressively.

We go back to the bench, get some final words from our coaches and the starters on our team are introduced. I go back to the bench and wait for the game to begin.

Orlandrea takes the jump ball. The bench cheers, it’s the beginning of another fast-paced game. Rachel Niven gets the first lay-up of the game and the Trojans sprint back to play defense. With skill one of our players will steal the ball and this will start a fast-break for another team mate.

I can honestly say on the bench I am in the game almost as much as when I am on the floor. I feel excited when a great play has been executed or one of my team mates does something that takes a lot of effort and skill.

After a few minutes I will be told by my coach to get on the floor. I go up to the scorers table and crouch down, asking for a sub. The ref calls me in and I am ready to go. I run onto the court and start to play. When on the court, nothing else matters. All that matters is the game and there is no time to think, you just need to rely on your practices to have been good enough that you know what you are doing on instinct. I live for the feeling of sprinting up and down, getting your personal job done.

As the game comes to an end it is a different story every day. There are games when you know you are going to win by 30 points and they are not so exciting at the end, and then there are games where anything can happen. Anything within 5 points becomes super intense quick and anything can happen. A simple turn-over, a simple foul, anything can change the game at that point.

Those games are by far the most exciting to watch and to play. Those games are what athletes train for everyday. That is the game my team is preparing for… In the national final. Well, the goal is for that game to be in national final. We are training for that game to be in the national final.

Hey, hey all! Welcome to my blog about life as a student-athlete at SAIT. My name is Annalise, but you may know me as #15 on the women’s basketball team.

To further introduce myself I will let you know a little about who I am. I was born in Calgary 19 years ago and grew up in Okotoks, Alberta, a town 20 minutes south of Calgary. I grew up the eldest of 4 kids, with 2 sisters and one brother. I have a big family, with many supportive aunts, uncles and grandparents. I am also lucky enough to have parents that support me in whatever I am doing.

I am also a second-year journalism student at SAIT.  Like many of the players on my team, I am at SAIT simply because out of high school I could not give up basketball. I had to try playing at the college level. I was recruited by Coach Donovan Martin, the head coach of our team, and it was then that I decided what course I would like to take. I decided on journalism because I always liked to write and figured it would be fun to interview people and write about what was happening. So here I am, writing this blog as a final assignment for one of my classes.

I went to high school at Holy Trinity Academy and while in school I was a competitive swimmer, as well as a basketball player for the HTA Knights. When I was 16 I competed at the Canadian Age Group Championships, which are the national championships for swimming. My mom was my swim coach and I placed around 20^th for the 50m and 100m backstroke. Although I loved swimming, it was beginning to lose it’s excitement for me and I decided to focus my efforts on the basketball court.  When I was in grade 12 my basketball team placed 2^nd at 3A provincials. Since then, I have been playing basketball at SAIT and taking journalism.

There, now you know me, so I would also like to introduce you to my team, because they are basically my family at SAIT. We spend at LEAST two hours with each other every day of the week (except Sundays) but usually more when you take into account weight-training, extra shooting practice and just hanging out.

# 4 Michala Allen is a first- year guard from Calgary. Unfortunately, she has a knee injury that has prevented her from playing games so far.

# 5 Brittany Pekar is a third-year guard from Calgary.

# 6 Megan Yellowfly is a first- year guard from Siksika Nation.

# 7 Taylor Pillsworth is a first- year point guard from Grande Prairie.

# 8 Kim Lee is a fifth-year guard from Toronto.

# 9 Rachel Caputo is a second- year guard from Edmonton.

# 10 Mecoh Bain is a third-year guard from Cranbrook, BC.

# 11 Breanna Emmerzael is a third-year post from Edmonton.

# 12 Orlandrea Moore is a fourth-year post from Springdale, MD.

# 13 Jerri-Lyn Chisholm is a third year forward from Calgary.

# 14 Claire Nesbitt is a fifth-year forward from Cranbrook

# 21 Breanna Synowec is a first- year guard from Bonnyville.

# 22 Tina Lockhart is a first- year forward from Airdrie.

# 23 Rachel Niven is a fifth-year point guard from Calgary.

Chelsey Pekar is a 2^nd year player with the Trojans and is from Calgary.

Kayla Lambert is our athletic trainer.

Coach Donovan Martin is the head coach of the women’s basketball team.

Coach Reg Carrick is the associate coach of the women’s basketball team.

Coach Robyn Yon is the assistant coach of the women’s basketball team.