Basketball has played an extremely large portion throughout my life that has helped shape me into the person I want to be. If it wasn’t for basketball I would not have ended up at Northeastern University. I was being recruited for basketball, and I was so stubborn during the process, I barely answered schools that tried to reach out and recruit me. I received multiple letters in the mail from many schools, ignoring most. I saw Northeastern’s letter and immediately had two thoughts: 1) It’s in Boston, a city and that would be a great place to go to school. 2) I’ve never heard of this school in my life.
I decided to go to the camp, it was a few weekends after I got the letter. It was around 3:00 a.m. my mom and I packed the car and left for Boston, I ended up arriving almost an hour early for the camp. I was able to shoot around, and the head coach, Coach Cole, even began rebounding for me. I did pretty well throughout the whole day at the camp. Afterwards, Coach even asked me to stay and play pick up with the women’s team. Only a few days after I got back from Boston I received a phone call from the head coach. She offered me a full scholarship to play basketball at Northeastern University. I was thrilled, but not set. It took me a few months to come clear of my decision, and parts of myself wanting to get the recruiting process over, but I decided Northeastern would be ideal and be the best school for me.
STAY TRUE TO YOU
I learned a lot during my four years at Northeastern. College basketball was much different than anything I had ever done before, and so was living in the city of Boston. One of the most important things I learned during my freshman year of college was to stay true to yourself. I had an interesting, different college experience. I was coming to college to join a team where most of these girls already have tight bonds, inside jokes, and team culture. It was easy to feel persuaded; to go with the flow and follow what the rest of the team did.
I felt slightly uncomfortable during my first few weeks at school. Everything I felt like I was and did was so much different than everyone else on my team. I enjoyed adventuring, meeting new people, and especially daring to be different.
I remember my first team workout so clearly. I remember at the end of my workout I walked up to my trainer, and I asked him “Are the workouts going to get harder?” He laughed at me, and warned me that the length of our season was long enough and to be grateful I did not think the workouts were too hard. That conversation will never leave my mind.
Our next team workout we were divided up into teams. With every drill we had to do, the losing team had to run. Prior to college, the way I was trained was that if one person on your team had to run, you all had to run. It did not matter if teams were split up during practice, we all paid the price together. That is what made us so cohesive.
Anyways, at our next team workout in college we started having competitions within our team. The first drill, my team lost and I had to run, while 6 others girls stood there watching us. That made me feel slighted. The next drill my team won. As the other 6 girls walk up to the line, and myself, everyone in the gym is looking at me like a crazy person in an asylum. “Stella we won, why are you running?”
Where I felt most comfortable around my team was on the basketball court. Outside of basketball, the team culture felt very defined. I knew I could change the culture within the basketball court. From my first team workouts at Northeastern, I was the only one running every single sprint we had to do. By the next month of being there, the whole team was running each sprint. Our culture was changing because I wasn’t afraid to stay true to myself.
People get recruited for sports, and hired for jobs, all because someone sees something in them that they can contribute to help make a program or company better. When I think of staying true to myself, I think of all the reasons that separate me from others. Not to go against all odds, but to create something better, bigger, and far more fun and exciting.
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