what you WILL see in D3 Hoops

There are a lot of things that as a spectator you probably won’t see when watching Division III women’s basketball this season. Most likely, no matter which teams you’re watching, you aren’t going to see the next WNBA draft pick. While it’s not impossible, you probably won’t witness a dunk like Candace Parker. And hopefully, you won’t see a player get pulled to the ground by her ponytail like in the New Mexico vs. BYU women’s soccer game. But—I can tell you about what you will see:

Fearlessness. Most people who knew anything about the George Fox Bruins would have expected the women on the team at Cal Lutheran to be afraid going into Sunday’s game. Clearly, that was not the case. They knew George Fox was the defending national championship team. And they knew that the Bruins were on a 36-game winning streak. Yet they were fearless. The Cal Lutheran Regals led almost the entire game and when the buzzer went off, they had won the game nobody thought they could.

Determination. The Illinois Wesleyan Titans spent the last six weeks of the 2008-2009 season as the No. 1 team in the nation. But when the pre-season Top 25 polls came out on D3hoops.com, they found themselves as #6. While they certainly haven’t had a long history as the top team in Division III, they wanted that position back. And with the team who filled that #1 spot (Washington University) on their schedule early on, they had the perfect opportunity to get it back. So that’s exactly what they did. They had a goal, and they were determined to achieve it. So they played the game, they won, and they earned their spot back on top.

Aggressiveness. Monmouth College lost a lot in their graduating class last year. The team will look to replace last year’s star players Tanesha Hughes and Melissa Gorski. A big problem they will face this season is their lack of size, but the way to make up for that is with aggressiveness. “We’re going to be smaller than most teams,” predicted Head Coach Melissa Bittner. “Lacking the size, we’ll need to be the scrappy, aggressive, athletic in-your-face team.” A team could have all the talent in the world, but if they don’t play aggressively it doesn’t matter. When it comes down to it, the best teams in the nation play aggressive.

Hard work. Every athlete knows that it is almost guaranteed that somewhere another athlete is working longer and harder. The University of Texas at Tyler will have a new head coach for women’s basketball this year.  Coach Stasha Richards will take over for the Patriots this season. When talking about success, she says this: “Everyone in the world would love to have a recipe for success. But, the truth of the matter is there is no sure fire way to ensure anyone will be successful in anything they do. I believe that there are many elements in the equation that can greatly improve the odds. The very first thing is to work as hard as we can in everything we do. We cannot take shortcuts.” Of course, not every single talented player is an extremely hard worker, but hard work can sometimes make up for talent, believe me I’ve seen it happen. Because the one thing no one can ever take away from you, and the one thing you can always control is how hard you work.

Victory. At the end of the season, there will be a team who can call themselves the best team in Division III women’s basketball. Though there will be many successful, hard-working, aggressive, determined and fearless teams, only one can win it all. There will be countless victories for numerous teams throughout this long season, and after all, that is what these teams are playing for. Even though people say “it’s not about wins or losses, it’s how you play the game”, I think Mia Hamm perfectly described how athletes really feel when she said “whoever said winning isn’t everything, probably never won.”