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UI Women's Basketball Team Working `Nine to Five' During Semester `Break'
Jan. 2, 2001
Christmas break is a month of rest and relaxation with finals done. Students go home for the holidays, well most of them, anyway. The University of Illinois women's basketball team is still in Champaign practicing. Since all but one of the women live in dorms rather than apartments, during the "break" we are staying in the Hawthorne Suites hotel, It is 7:30 in the morning. Probably almost all of the other college students are looking forward to three or four more hours of sleep when I am getting my wake up call. Ugh! I hate waking up this early, and it's worse because we're supposed to be on break. Instead we have practice at 9:00, and that means we have to have breakfast and show up at the Ubben practice facility by eight to get taped for practice. Despite the lack of sleep, most people are still pretty cheery that early. Karen Hagberg has adjusted to the morning practices. "I used to not be a morning person, but on this team you have to be. It doesn't matter how early practice is, everyone is always wide awake and ready to go." During break Coach Theresa Grentz has no (NCAA) time limit on how long we can practice. She has a new philosophy on practice time this year. "I can go as long as I want to," she said. "We are going from nine to five every day. We will come in and watch film and go over plays, then do some dummy offense. I will give you guys a break for an hour for lunc,h and then we will come back and have our real practice from about 1:30 to 4:00. I will let you guys have your nights to ourselves." So I get to the gym at about 8 a.m. to get taped. Then I have a little bit of fun in the training room with the other players until I get kicked out by our athletic trainer. "Suzanne hardly ever needs treatment so I always joke around with her about being too loud in the training room. I ask her if she needs anything, then she automatically walks out," says Stephanie Biberstein. Steph and I always joke around about that. Then I'm ready to start my day. First we go into our team room and watch film. Today we watch film on yesterday's practice. If we had a game yesterday we would have watched the game film instead. Freshman Anne O'Neil says that's one of the best parts of her day. "Watching film helps me to see what exactly I am doing wrong on the court. Coach Reinking breaks it down pretty well on film. It helps me out a lot." After we watch films we go into our classroom and Coach breaks down the plays with us. She puts each play on the board and says where each person is supposed to go during that play. Redshirt freshman Cindy Dallas says that when the coach explains the different options that come from each play, she listens. "I am really not very good with plays, I know that is a problem I have. But when Coach goes through each one and breaks it down it helps me a lot." After we get finished going through the plays it's about 11:00 a.m. Now we go to the court and run the plays without any defense. We call that "dummy offense." This can become tedious and most people don't enjoy it. "I really don't like dummy offense, says junior Allison Curtin.. "I think it is my least favorite thing and we have been doing it so much these days. I hope this helps us in the games because we tend not to run the offense (well) during the games." After running dummy offense for an hour or so, we break for lunch. We have an hour for lunch, then we come back at 1:00 to get taped for our second practice. Tonight we leave for Missouri at 5:30 p.m. So we have to make sure that we have our stuff packed for the trip. After the Missouri game, we'll get to go home for Christmas so everyone's pretty excited. That makes it kind of hard to stay focused during the afternoon practice. It's a normal session, where we do drills to warm up and then we scrimmage and run more plays. Coach lets us out at 4:15 p.m., earlier than usual, because we have to get our things from the hotel and eat before we get on the bus for St. Louis. When we load the bus 5:15, sophomore Shavonna Hunter is one of the few people who's smiling. "Most people would rather fly than make the three hour drive to Missouri, but I hate flying, so this drive makes me happy," she says. The bus ride goes smoothly and we arrive at the Marriott Hotel in downtown St. Louis at 8:30 p.m. We check into our rooms at about 9 o'clock. "Coach has us on a pretty tight schedule this trip. We need a win before we go home for Christmas so that people will go home happy," says junior forward Dawn Vana. "We have a curfew at 10:00 p.m. and we have to be in bed at that time." The curfew is enforced, and if you are caught not in bed, you will get in trouble. We're all afraid of that, so we go to bed when she tells us to. So after watching the Michigan State game on television together, we all make it to our own rooms and get to bed. Now the busy day is finally over for the Fighting Illini women. Even though we don't get a normal Christmas break like most students, everyone on this team enjoys it.
And the day after Christmas, we're all up at 7:30 a.m., ready to do it all again.
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