“Dear Journal,

Since the Notre Dame game, a couple of things have happened. First we lost another player, a freshman point guard, Amber Robinson. It seemed that Dayton just wasn’t the place for her. She fit in well with the team and all, but it was just too much hard work. You know you hear about players that could cut it and some that couldn’t, well I love Robbie (that is what we called her) but her work ethic just wasn’t that of a college athlete. She wasn’t mature enough yet to handle it. So she left to find a place that would better fit her and she did…..at West Virginia University. I wish her the best of luck, too. She is going to be a good player, but she is young and she has a lot of maturing to do.

I hear that some people are interested to know what happened to the other three players that quit or left. OK so I’ll go down the list. First to leave was Stassia. She chose to leave and go to Kentucky in the summer time. It wasn’t because she didn’t like the new coaches or even the higher intensity workouts. It was simply because it was Kentucky. A SEC school, a much bigger conference than Dayton, a chance to get recognized at a higher level, and the fact that it was right around the corner from her home are big reasons why she left. Stassia is a family person, so that played a big key as well.

Next was Julie Kafun. Julie is such a fun-loving girl. She was so awesome to be around and was just funny. She liked it here at Dayton but when we got new coaches she thought it was even better. A brand new start to prove herself and she loved the opportunity. But when it got into the first week of practice and stuff, she was almost in over her head. Pre-season with our new strength coach Daniel was very demanding and the coaching staff was much more demanding than him. Julie loved the game, but not at the serious and demanding level that they raised it to. She liked it when it was fun and laid back, so she chose to go to Findlay, where it was not as serious and demanding so she could enjoy it more instead of being in pain and exhaustion all the time.

The last and final player to leave before Robbie did, was Amanda Moore. Amanda was a quiet person and liked to keep to herself. When she did open up at times, she was a very funny and humorous person. But she wasn’t as happy with the Dayton atmosphere as well as with basketball. She struggled through pre-season, barely even participating at times because of her knee, which she had recurring problems with. But her love for the game was hard at a place that she felt that she could not be herself. So because of her struggles with the demands of basketball as well as not feeling at home in Dayton, she left to go to Grambling, where she felt she could be herself.

Every one of these girls were liked and were missed, but I hope they are doing well in their current situations and I wish them the best.

OK, so back to the season……After Robbie left the team, we had a few days to prepare for the Ohio State tourney and then it was Christmas break and time to get away. I felt good about going there and I felt we were prepared but the two losses proved that we weren’t. Both games were a tail of two halves. We played terrible the first half and awesome the second, or awesome the first and bad the second. Lack of execution, hustle, and just plain game smarts led us to our two losses in the Buckeye Classic. The only bright spot for myself was making the all-tournament team, which I didn’t know I made because I left right after my game and frankly I didn’t really care. I was mad because not only the teams we lost to, we could have beaten, but that was my last and only chance to play against Ohio State.

I have been wanting to play them since I was a freshman, and this was my first and only shot to do that and it was over. I have always wondered what would happen if we played them last year, this year, two years ago or whatever. It has always been a dream of mine, and the opportunity was finally at my fingertips and I tried all I could but it didn’t come true. I have more anger then frustration about the whole situation because it was right there and fate was in my hands and I couldn’t pull it out. I mean yeah it’s a team sport and you have five people on the court not one, and five determine the game not one, but I always thought I could control my own destiny and it turns out I cant. That is the worst feeling in the world I think, having the opportunity to accomplish a goal or dream at your fingertips and you fail. I’m not afraid of failing, and God only knows how many times I have failed before succeeding at things only to fail again, but it is a terrible, terrible feeling. To make things even worse, I had the whole holiday to think about it until I got back. Since I hate losing, you can only imagine the thoughts that filled my head the whole break.

It was always fun spending time and hanging out with my family. But if you knew them, you know that when you come to visit, all we talk about is basketball. My family is such a strong supporter of me, and I love holidays but I almost hate them at times, because if I lost a game right before a holiday, I knew that all I would hear about is that game. Everyone is an expert in my family. Everyone has an opinion on what was right and wrong, what I should have or shouldn’t have done, what the coach should have or shouldn’t have done and so on. This Christmas break was lovely because since we only won two games, I was basically the joke of the party. Usually I am able to defend myself pretty good, but this time I really had no ammo. We had only won two games and majority of the other games were one sided besides one other we should have won. Clearly I had nothing to defend with, so I had to sit there and take it, which is so hard because I always have something to say. Biting my tongue was real humbling.

The break went by so fast, I was back at school before I knew it. I felt as if it wasn’t long enough away from each other to clear my head and be rejuvenated again. I wasn’t rejuvenated. Thoughts of our last games were still in my head and we had a few days before we went to Marquette. So I laced up my shoes and was on the court again on what seemed like the next day. We had two good practices and I felt good about going to Marquette. The coaches seemed refreshed which was good, because I think they needed the break more than we did. More so a break from us because I’m sure they could have killed us by now. At any rate, they felt good and I felt good too about winning.

The game started out, we were winning, 11-2. It was great. We were finally clicking on all cylinders. As the game progressed, each team went on runs back and forth it seemed like every 3 or 4 minutes. At halftime we were down by two I think, which was awesome, our lowest deficit yet going into a half. Everything seemed to be going well, like we might have a chance at the end to win one. But a few defensive mistakes left a 6 point margin with a few minutes to go and we missed some easy buckets to tie it up and ended up losing by 9. My high went so low so fast. I thought things were finally looking up and down they crashed so fast.

Not much time to mourn once again, our first conference game was a couple days away. Back on the plane, back to Dayton, back to practice and we started gearing up for Richmond.

Richmond and George Washington were our first two conference games. As if it couldn’t be any better of a pick. I mean no warm up games, nothing. Straight to two of the best teams in the conference. But it was cool, because how cool would it be to pick them off right away to set the tone. I thought it would be cool. So as I always do, I got hyped to whoop some butt.

I always think my team is going to win, no matter what. No matter how many games we have lost or won, or how many players we have. But like earlier, the tale of two halves, cost us both games. At least we know we can play with the best in the league though. So that was what we took from both games.

The next weekend we were away at Duquesne and UMass. Duquesne, a middle of the road team, and UMass, winless in the conference too, were both games we could take. We were prepared and ready to go.

In the first game, Duquesne, we go into the half with the lead. We felt pretty confident. Holding their leading scorer to only 6, we forced them to do things they weren’t used to and it was working. We came out in the second half and Candace Futrell, their leading scorer, blows up and all the sudden we cant stop her or their freshman post player Louey Hall. Well you know where this ends…..in a loss, of course. We took from this game that we had them beat and then we beat ourselves. So we learned a lesson on how to keep a lead and never letting up if we are winning.

UMass was just a blur. We had a game plan and they supposedly were the worse shooting team but managed like 50 some percent from the field on us. Our coaches were mad because even though they hadn’t won a game yet, they were so confident in beating us that they were watching Big Daddy in their locker room before the game. They were late getting on the floor and warming up because of it. So using that as fire, we came out looking to pay them back for their misguided judgment about us. It was neck and neck until a 5-minute span when we couldn’t score, which rendered us down 10 at the half. We came out in the second half and cut it as close to 4 but that was it. We gave UMass their first win of the conference. I had a good shooting game. I ended up with 27 points. But the fact remains, we still lost, and no matter how many points I scored, I would have rather won. I would trade every point to win that game. I would trade every point to win every game we have played this year. Oh well, we headed back on the plane to Dayton, again with two losses, looking, as always, to win our next.”

Stefanie