It’s a fast transition for WNBA rookies. At some point, you’re enjoying within the NCAA match together with your faculty group, and every week or two later, you’re drafted and formally an expert basketball participant. Every week after that, you’re in coaching camp on your rookie WNBA season. In only a month’s time, you’ve completed faculty, began your profession, and your life has executed an entire 180-degree flip.
As a result of that, it’s fully cheap for a rookie to be taking all of it in at coaching camp. They’ve been thrown into a totally new system with new coaches and new teammates, now a tiny fish in an unlimited ocean. They’re additionally residing out their goals, lastly enjoying within the WNBA — all of them look a bit wide-eyed and in awe for the primary weeks of the season.
WNBA coaching camp has simply began, however a number of rookies have already skilled Media Day and are adapting to their new roles. The Washington Mystics had three of the primary six draft picks, getting Sonia Citron, Kiki Iriafen, and Georgia Amoore within the course of. The Mystics are in the midst of a rebuild, and these rookies are hoping to be part of the subsequent technology of this franchise.
“It’s been aggressive going towards the bigs which were within the league for a very long time and having to earn my maintain,” mentioned Iriafen at Mystics media day. “We’re studying lots and our coaches do a terrific job of constructing positive that we perceive the whole lot.”
Coaching camp is a brief period of time, and gamers have to show themselves. To strengthen to coaches that the abilities these WNBA groups scouted them for are nonetheless there, whereas additionally making an attempt to point out off their versatility. For Iriafen, meaning exhibiting Washington that she will be able to shoot three-pointers.
“My coaches encourage me to shoot my three,” Iriafen mentioned about her coaching camp objectives. “I’ve been taking pictures it lots in apply and staying late to make my photographs. I do know that’s key on this league, if I’m enjoying the 4, perhaps the three.”
There are, in fact, challenges to the short turnaround between the faculty season and WNBA coaching camp. Studying new terminology, what your new coaches want from you, and even simply the distinction in routines that include becoming a member of a brand new group. One other large issue is that the WNBA is inherently a extra bodily league than the NCAA, and the tempo is lots quicker than faculty basketball.
A reminder of how briskly issues change within the WNBA occurred the morning after these quotes have been gathered, when it was introduced that Amoore tore her ACL, altering each her and the Mystics’ story arcs practically instantly.
For Sonia Citron, there’s a stability between acclimating whereas determining what her coaches need from her. “I’m taking the whole lot in, being a sponge,” Citron mentioned. “Studying from the coaches, studying from the vets, studying from our teammates, and simply making an attempt to be rookie.”
Throughout the nation in Seattle, one other group of rookies is competing for spots on the Seattle Storm roster. Not like the Mystics, the Storm have the items to probably make a playoff run this season. There are not many spots for rookies to remain on the roster, so coaching camp is extra aggressive in a way. With that harsh actuality in thoughts, rookies Serena Sundell, Jordan Hobbs and Madison Conner are simply making an attempt to soak up as a lot as they will from their group’s veterans.
“Even within the two brief days that coaching camp has been, I really feel like I’ve been in a position to develop my sport already,” Jordan Hobbs mentioned. Hobbs performed at Michigan, undecided if she would even be drafted into the WNBA. She had a job lined up within the company sector and was prepared to maneuver on from basketball. But, after the yr she had a Michigan and the way in which the Wolverines’ season ended, she knew in her intestine she wasn’t executed with the game but. Whereas she was on the All-Star Mix on the Girls’s Last 4, she referred to as that job and advised them she could be pursuing basketball after commencement as a substitute. Now, she’s in Seattle competing for a roster spot.
“It’s simply been an entire 180, however I’m tremendous grateful for it and simply blessed to be on this place right here,” Hobbs mentioned about her resolution.
One recurring sentiment from rookies is how nicely their faculty packages ready them for this chance. All six of those gamers have been drafted out of elite faculty basketball packages like USC, Notre Dame, Michigan and extra, packages which were producing WNBA gamers for many years. It’s now time for them to use all the abilities they discovered in faculty to their skilled basketball careers.
Because the WNBA grows, extra rookies are getting probabilities to make WNBA rosters. It’s changing into extra of a actuality to pursue basketball after faculty, and regardless of the short turnaround, these rookies wouldn’t wish to be anyplace else.
