Q: How long have you been playing?
A: I’ve been playing basketball since 1st grade.
Q: What motivates you?
A: I feel like I’m mostly motivated because I just like playing the game. Also I get motivated because I want to stay in shape and have people think I’m athletic.
Q: What was your best season? Why?
A: My best season was probably my freshman year. I was on the freshman team and I liked it because we won the conference championship and I loved my coach.
Q: Why did you decide to start playing the sport you do?
A: When I was younger I lived at my grandparents’ house with my mom and some of my uncles still lived there too. They would always come home from school or work and play with me. My uncle Dan played basketball in college so he would usually take me to the gym or just out in the driveway to play and I just fell in love with it. Basically I started playing because of my uncle.
Q: What is the ultimate goal you can imagine related to your sport?
A: I think playing in college would be cool and I think I could get some offers if I really put in the time and work. But I would rather play golf in college, so for basketball my main goal is just to play through high school and maybe winning state or conference on a varsity team.
Q: What have been your biggest achievements in athletics?
A: Freshman year winning conference was cool. Also making varsity this year as a sophomore has been pretty big achievement for me. My family is pretty proud of me for making it so that makes me feel good.
Q: How do you think coaches can be more effective?
A: Personally, I think that all the girls sports programs could do more conditioning. I know that a lot of teams don’t really do any of that but I think it could help. But with coaching styles I feel like positive reinforcement works better than like putting players down, but I don’t really care how the coaches coach as long as it works.
Q: What are your main strengths in your sport?
A: I’d say I’m a decent shooter and I can handle the ball pretty well.
Q: What do you need to improve?
A: I need to be more aggressive when I play and I need more patience when I’m on offense.
Q: What do you like about training?
A: I like knowing that I’m getting better. Even if it’s a hard workout or a tough practice I can still kind of be positive because I know it’s helping me.
Q: What do you dislike about training?
A: Sometimes it’s hard and I don’t understand what I’m supposed to be doing. It’s also a big time commitment, at least for basketball. We have two hour or longer practices everyday plus games so it’s just a lot. Another thing is that my body is literally constantly in pain, but I wouldn’t really have it any other way.
Q: Who are your biggest inspirations?
A: Biggest inspirations are probably my uncle, family, coach and team. Also Jeff Hoyh. He was my freshman coach and I love that man. I always want to make him be proud of me.
