We'll start with how did you first get into basketball was like your first experience.
Um, I always loved sports growing up and I mean, any type of sport or any really I was always involved in it. And with basketball, it just seemed once I got older it was seemed the most realistic for me to play it in college. I feel like I could excel at it more than the other sports and so I just kept focusing on it.
Yeah, you talked about playing a lot of sports three sport athlete in high school. How are you just able to keep up with each of those sports and just really keep up that dedication. Yeah, I
guess that's just my personality is always just wanting to be busy with something like I can't ever sit around. I always have to be active. And I think time management is a good skill that I've built over time and it helped me with all of it.
Just making sure you're keeping track everything not losing your head. Yeah, for sure. And so you eventually decide that you want to play basketball at the collegiate level. Why did you decide to come to the zoo? What really drew you here?
Well, when I met the team on a visit, they were just the perfect people for me to be around. The culture that they have here was similar to my high school and I wanted to bring that with me here and also it's just close to home. Competing in the SEC, like it just checked all my boxes.
So you talked about like that culture aspect. What specifically about this culture really sticking out to you so far?
Our connectivity as a team. As soon as I came here as a freshman, I'd never felt out I was always feeling welcomed with the girls and they just made me feel at home. Awesome.
And so you talked about being a freshman, kind of still getting introduced to spend this first summer out here. What's it been like at the collegiate athletic level? It's
definitely bigger and better than high school and that's a good thing and a bad thing. Just like gotta get used to it a lot. Gotta adapt to it really quickly, and I feel like my team and my coaches have helped me a lot with that. adaptiveness
What do you think has been like the one thing that stuck out to you about college athletics that you've just had to get used to? Um,
that probably is the physicality like I said, like, even with like, officiating is different to on that side of it too. So just you know, again, you gotta
learn to throw that body around a little more at all. And so, you bet here, you've been getting a bunch of minutes so far, you've been playing a lot of time. What's it been like to be getting minutes? So your first couple collegiate games?
Yeah, I mean, I mean, it's great. I never thought really, that I'd be able to play this early on and so just kind of knowing that all the work that I put in is paying off and my unfortunately everyone down and that kind of forced me to step up into the position and my coaches have helped me a lot and in playing the one that's not really what I worked on over the summer, so they really helped me as soon as we knew I had to get in that position.
You talked about playing that backup one spot primary. What's been like the biggest thing you've had to learn when it comes to work in that primary one spot?
I'm playing with pace really is something I've always been good at. I feel like but I know like mom has just got a ton of speed and that's not really nice, nice strength like her. So just playing with my own pace at my own speed and just taking care of the ball.
Awesome. I know you've only been in the zoo for a couple months but either inside of basketball outside what's been like your favorite thing what stuck out to you the most one particular thing or series
um, just all the people that we have here, the coaches teammates. My boyfriend is also here, which brings a piece of home with me here and like just this the staff everywhere they're always so helpful and there's just a person for everybody or there's person for everything like anything you need. The they've got a special person for that job.
It's kind of like a home away from home type deal. Feel a sense of belonging, and then we'll go outside of basketball. So what's it been like trying to balance school and basketball and then what are you studying? Obviously,
come in here in the summer helped me a lot with adjusting to that because we took a summer class so that kind of let me know what what school here be like and so the school has been pretty easy to balance I'd say this first semester just because I'm taking a lot of Gen Ed's and so those are the most basic classes you can get and that's perfect for me to like ease into it. Awesome. And then
outside of basketball, excuse me. Outside of basketball, what do you do to fill your time? What do you enjoy doing?
Outside of basketball, I'd say our team likes to do a lot of things together like just hanging out going out to eat or going to movies tonight and other than that, like I said, my boyfriend's on the basketball team here. And so whenever we can, we're always trying to hang out and get some time in before season gets really busy. All
right, that's really cool. Um, who is your boyfriend?
He's Danny Stevens. He's a freshman on men's basketball. Awesome,
very cool. And then we've talked a lot about going out to eat what you got to favorite foods. I'm the really tickles your fancy.
I mean, there's new places here that I don't have at home like Shakespeares we don't have Maude at home. So again, a different kind of pizza is pretty good and I don't know really I can eat anything.
Either from Illinois your your deep dish girl or I'm
not really any kind really anything. Anything
else I didn't touch on anything else you want to put out there. Well, I got you. That's good. That means I did my job right. So much pleasure meet you guys
