The women’s basketball team, composed of 14 players, kicked off their season in British Columbia as they traveled to the DII Canadian Tip-Off Classic. There, they faced two teams from the Elite Eight, the University of Tampa and Gannon University. They played one game a day over a three day period, finishing with a 0-3 record. At their tournament, guard J.P. Perkins was named as part of the DII Canadian Tip-Off Classic All-Tournament Team.
“I’m nervous, but I’m also excited,” Mikah Chapman, a junior on the team, said before their traveling. “I’m ready to actually play some teams. I love my teammates and I love playing with them, but sometimes playing against them in practice gets a little boring. I’m ready to play some new teams, and playing against Elite Eight really, really shows who we are. We beat 1, 2, 3 of those teams and our names are out there… We are the giant crushers. That’s the biggest goal this year: to all those big names, they’re not ready for St. Ed’s.”
Ahead of the season, Lone Star Conference (LSC) made a preseason poll of the standings of the teams. St. Edward’s ranks 12th out of 16. Head coach J.J. Riehl, an alumni from St. Edward’s who has since coached the team for 22 years, looks forward to this season to amplify the competitive nature of women’s basketball.
“We’re playing against the host team, opening up against the host team the first game of the year,” Riehl said. “And then we’re going to play against two teams that were in the Elite Eight last year and probably are ranked in the top 10 going into this year. And so how do we embrace that challenge? How do we figure out how we can compete on that level? I’m looking forward to watching and seeing how we react to that, to react to tough situations and how we can grow from it going forward. And then lastly, I love being in my team’s orbit. I love, love, love spending time with them and being in their presence. I think selfishly I’m just excited to get away with them and laugh and have fun. Just doing nothing like we do on a normal day. I think those are the things that I’m really looking forward to this week.”
After their travel games, the team will have two home games as part of the South Central Regional Crossover. Today, Nov. 8, they square off in their home opener against Regis University, and on Nov. 9 they will face the Colorado School of Mines.
“I mean, these are great experiences,” Riehl said. “They get to see some cool places. Travel early in the year is always really, really, really good for, in my opinion, you get away from all the distractions that are here and you just get to focus on each other and just kind of pouring into our culture. So I think we’re all really looking forward to the month of November. And obviously the challenges it brings because it’s a very tough schedule. We’re going to play a lot of ranked opponents in the month of November, and clearly we are the underdog in a lot of those situations. And so it’s just embracing that and embracing the challenge and the opportunities that play in really good teams that come with that. And for us, we say keep the main thing the main thing, and that’s our culture and who we are.”
Following their two home games, the team will travel to Salt Lake City, Utah, to play in the Westminster Basketball Invite. They will face off against Westminster University and Colorado Mesa University. Towards the end of November, they will have two additional travel games before competing back at home court. First, they’ll travel to Lubbock, Texas, to face Lubbock Christian University as part of the LSC. Then the team will head to Gunnison, Colorado, to oppose Western Colorado University.
Out of the remaining four games of the season, three will be on campus. The first, on Dec. 5, will be against Sul Ross State University. Then on Dec. 7, Western New Mexico University will take their shot at St. Ed’s home court. Midwestern State University will be the final travel game of the semester, out in Wichita Falls, Texas, on Dec. 17.
Their final game will be Dec. 19 at home against Arlington Baptist University. The game is also their community engagement game, where they invite children they have a mentorship program with from Travis Heights Elementary to cheer them on.
“We’ve got 250 or 300 second through fifth graders in here, and we’ll give ’em a T-shirt and they do competitions at timeouts and halftime,” Riehl said. “I think it’s a really cool thing that we get to bring them back over here and showcase St. Ed’s and showcase our girls and what would otherwise be a very dull game with no students here in the middle of the day on a random Thursday. It gets to be a fun experience. So that will wrap up the semester.”
The team looks brand new with eight new players from around the country joining the squad. Riehl looks forward to seeing them play together.
“We have a lot of people that can play, which is really good for us,” Riehl said. “It’s probably one of the deeper teams I’ve coached at St. Edward’s at all position groups. I think in that regard, you see a lot of differences than you saw last spring. And then I think the overriding difference is just our culture in what we emphasize, what we make important, how we live that out. When you watch us play, I hope that you see a difference in that and how intentional we are, our culture, our TNT (Tough n’ Togetherness) and our sisterhood. And I think it’s a totally different dynamic, totally different style of play. I think you’ll see noticeable differences.”
