Umpqua Crossover

This last weekend our team was fortunate enough to travel to Roseburg Oregon for their Crossover tournament. During the 7+ hour trip, we took turns reading from a favorite book of mine entitled "Making the Big time Where You Are" by Frosty Westering. I was impressed at how much this book touched our team. Everyone really absorbed and learned so much about each other and themselves. It truly changed our perception of what the Big Time really is.

The following day we got up early had waffles for breakfast and took off for our shoot around. I informed the girls to wear something warm as Cheryl drove us to our next destination. The Umpqua Safari!!! As a early Christmas Gift we took the girls on quite an expedition. It was a wild life refuge for endangered animals. We saw so many cool animals, many of them were free to roam their designated area "Africa, Asia and the Americas." We saw Lions, Monkeys, Bears, Giraffs, Zebras, Cheetahs, the list goes on and on. My least favorite of the animals were the Yaks and the Crazy Emu that chased us from Africa to Asia and all the way to the Americas. He literally was pecking the glass, I think he wanted to watch our game vs the Umpqua All-Star team later that night. Which was absolutely fantastic.

We had the opportunity to test our skills versus a very good alumni team consisting of Division 1 talent and players who were stars in other 4 year programs. We got down by as many as 14 points with 6 minutes to go. We through on a press and ended up coming back to win the game by 2 points. It was a lot of fun and inspiring to see how well the Umpqua girls had stayed in great shape and continue to play the game that they obviously love so much.

The next day we played the regular Umpqua team. They are an extremely fast and energetic team that applies pressure defense at every inch of the floor. This was the second time we played them and unfortunately they have accounted for 2 of our 3 losses this season. However, I felt that we improved a ton since playing them in November, it was a good gauge for our team.

On Sunday we played Highline for 3rd place in the Crossover. Highline made the NWAACC tournament last year and they always have a competitive team and program. Not to mention after watching them play we felt that the two teams were extremely even on talent. We reminded the girls numerous times how the team with the most heart would win the game. We told them "It is gonna come down to who wants it more." We found ourselves down by 4 with 50 seconds to go, when Chelsi Pakootas managed a steal and Jenny Beamer converted a lay up to bring us with in 2 with 22 seconds to go. Highline brought the ball across half court and called a timeout to draw up a play. On the inbounds pass, Chelsi dove on a loose ball and tied it up. Fortunately, the possession arrow was in our favor and we brought the ball across the floor and called a timeout. They gave us the ball underneath, and we drew up a last minute inbounds play, Chelsi got the pass from Heather Arnone and converted on a floater in the middle of the key to tie it up and send us to overtime. We ended up winning the game by four in OT, it was a fantastic game and the icing on the cake was that Chelsi was put on the all tournament team.