The year so far in pictures...

Below are some pictures taken throughout the year to give a glimpse into what life is like out on the road... We'll start in Chicago!

MONDAY MADNESS!!!

Last night, in the "caf" (our dining hall!) was the first annual MONDAY MADNESS!!! Our athletic department setup a portable goal in which our team and the men's team competed with the students in a shooting contest for a prize! (Don't worry, only the SU student got the prize!) Then, much to the delight of the student body, they lowered the goal for 3 male and 3 female students to compete in a dunk contest! We had some two handed slams, some attempts between the legs, we had an apple bite in mid-air, we even had one jump so high he hit his head and no the dunk did not go down! The winning dunk was jumping over three squatting friends for the slam!

It was an amazing night in which we all felt the support from our student body! Below are some video clips and pictures from the night! You will see both the men's and women's teams doing a little dancing along with Spike and Moses! For those that don't know, Spike is our Bulldog and Moses is the leader of our student booster club 'The Red Sea'!

The caf was full!!! The goal is in the back and no chandeliers were harmed during the night!

Both teams were introduced to a packed house!

Coach Morris got the crowd fired up! It's too bad I missed his "woof woof"!

Moses got the dancing going...

...but these were the moves of the night! Both the men's and women's team got out on the floor! It was an awesome night that was so much fun! Thanks to everyone who came out and to those that couldn't make it... we hope to see you in the Pete Hanna Center this season!!!

Put a RING on it!!!!

Well they are finally here and we all have them on our fingers!!! OUR RINGS!!!

The 2011-2012 Southern Conference Tournament Championship team was presented with their rings at this past weekends football game! It was a great event and our two seniors from last year were able to be with us which made it that much more special!!!!

As we move into a new year it was a great way of celebrating, for one final time, the special season that was 2011-2012!!!

The following blog was written by freshman Keke Fletcher out of Huntsville, AL

Keke, left, with teammates Jazmine Martin, Jazmine Powers and Ruth Ketcham

My transition from high school to college was fairly easy, but for most people it would probably be a different story. I never got homesick, though I did see my parents every weekend for the first 5 weeks. I feel like, however, I was prepared for this transition mentally and I know that if I need my parents or family, they are only a phone call away. Although, with this new transition comes freedom and unless you know how handle this freedom responsibly you will fall hard. So come to college with a mindset of what you are and what you are not going to do.

The best part about the difference in high school and college probably has to be the school hours. You can choose when to take classes, instead of being forced to sit through 8 hours of class 5 days a week, however, the workload is definitely harder than all my years of high school, especially coming in as a freshman. This might differ depending on what your major is. My major is Exercise Science and I do not have to do a lot of papers, which I love, but as a freshman, I am required to take Cultural Perspective and Communication Arts which are both filled with papers and essays. However, I am not given more than I can handle. Other than working hard, the best advice I can give, is to pay attention in class no matter how boring the class might seem, because you may get a boring class! 

BOO...at the zoo!!!

On Friday night our team made it out to the Birmingham Zoo to volunteer at it's annual Boo at the Zoo event! Our team spent the evening handing out candy to hundreds and hundreds of trick-or-treaters and there may have even been a little dancing involved at the night's end! The team got into character...or several characters... and enjoyed a fun (yet cold!) evening at the zoo!!! Below are some pictures from the night!!!

Home...and staying!

The following was written by junior guard Jazmine Martin from Hoover, AL. Hoover is a suburb of Birmingham located about ten minutes from the campus of Samford.

Living ten minutes away from school has it's pros and its cons but I absolutely love it. To me, my family means everything and when deciding to come to Samford, that played a huge role in my decision. I love the fact that I can go home every single day if I wanted to and not many people on our team have that privilege, so I am very appreciative of that. Being at Samford gives me the opportunity not to miss a moment of my younger siblings lives also. I have a five year old sister and a seven year old brother and being able to go watch them while they play in their extracurricular activities means a lot to them from me as a big sister but it also means a lot more to me knowing that they want to follow in my foot steps. I'm glad that I don't have to miss out on any part of them growing up. Going to college 10 minutes away is one of the best things that I could ask for. 

What I wish I had known...

The following blog was written by Shelby Campbell a sophomore guard from Murfreesboro, TN

When I first started getting letters from Samford, people always told me how great of a school it was and how lucky I was to get this opportunity. My dad paints houses in Brentwood, Tennessee, and when he mentioned his daughter going to Samford, it seemed that almost every customer either went to Samford or had a relative that had been there. I heard so many positive things about the academic part of it and how it was a tough school though. Everyone would talk about how tough it was going to be with just school work at Samford, but I never really talked to people about how it was playing basketball and having to handle school work. That is what leads me to answer the question of what I wish I would have known before coming to Samford as a freshman. Two major areas I wish I had known were going to be so important in my future before moving here and starting school along with playing ball were an effective way to study and also being able to manage my time between school work and basketball.

Studying is imperative in order to become a successful college student. The type of studying required is nothing like studying for a high school test or exam either. College exams require a greater mastery of the subject by going into a lot more detail and each questions needs a great amount of thought. Coming in as a freshman for my first test, I prepared as if I was taking a high school test because that was all I had ever known. I would study off and on, but only knew the information on the surface and not the details of the subject. When it came test time I knew bits and pieces of the information, but not as much as I should have for the test. I learned very quickly that studying for college tests is very important and you do not want to wait till the night before to start. It is best to try and study a little bit of the information every day because the test are not over just one or two chapters. They usually have three to five chapters on a test so it is best to learn the topics as you go along and not just plan on learning them all in one night. Coming in as a freshman, I feel like it would be important to understand that studying is no joke in college courses. It is so important to find a certain method of studying that works for you in which you learn the information and can build upon it.

(Shelby, right, with teammate Hannah Dawson in New York City last season)

      Time management is another thing I wish I would have known and understood before coming in as a freshman. I never really knew how time consuming basketball was, along with having school work. It is very possible to handle, but you must know how to manage your time, that way you are not staying up late every single night after basketball practice trying to finish a paper or study for a test. I did struggle with this the first semester because I had no idea how to manage all my school work along with practice, games, and road trips for basketball. Being able to manage your time will help you get your work done earlier and hopefully, it will take stress off that can feel overbearing at times. You have to set time aside to eat, do homework, do laundry, have a good practice, and if all of this piles up, it can add a lot of stress. It is good to know before starting freshman year how important it is to be able to manage your time with other things you have to do along with basketball practice, games, and road trips.  I know that I have made this sound like a daunting, impossible task, but after the first semester the routine becomes pretty normal to the average college athlete.  Even though I might have come in initially unaware of the challenges ahead of me involving time management and the rigors of school work, there were lots of people who helped me make it through to insure that I would come out okay!

Race for the Cure!

This past Saturday our team arrived bright and early (5:45am to be exact!) to Linn Park in downtown Birmingham in order to help set up the Susan G. Komen: Race for the Cure! It was an amazing event in which our team worked tirelessly for the morning stuffing bags, moving road barriers and setting up tables and chairs! It was a great way to spend a morning and we look forward to helping again next year!

My day...with a cafeteria tour included!

The following is written by junior post player Kylie Black of Danville, AL.

A day in the life of me, Kylie Black, is pretty interesting.  I start my day off with breakfast at the ‘caf.’  I always have to get the cheese grits and eggs, very healthy I know.  There are many other things that are delicious in the caf but that is just my personal favorite.  After my breakfast of champions, I head to my first class, which is statistics.  My teacher has an unusual style but she teaches us exactly what we need to know and I actually enjoy the class.  Then after that class I head to my second class of the day, which is BP, or biblical perspectives.  This class is a core course that is required of every student attending Samford University.  My teacher for this class is very animated.  He makes reading the Bible an adventure and makes the story fit into our lives as college students.  He also says that he is the women’s basketball team’s favorite teacher because he has had so many of us in his classes.

After my BP class, I head to the caf for lunch.  There is usually about half the team in the caf so I never have to eat alone.  We have a plethora of food options for lunch.  There is a grill with grilled chicken, hamburgers, hotdogs, and things like that. Then there is a line with pizza.  The first month of my freshman year I ate pizza everyday, so I would say it’s the best thing they have.  Then there are two lines for “classic” foods which could be numerous things, from chicken to pork to fettuccine alfredo.  Then finally there is the “innovations” line which is where the special of the day is located.  It is usually pretty good.  There is also a salad bar and a dessert bar.  After the caf, I have another class, which is School of Music, and it is my favorite class this semester.  It is required for my major, elementary education and we sing and dance, and I will actually get to teach a lesson. 

(Kylie, right, at the women's basketball banquet with teammate Christy Robinson)

After my three classes I head to the gym for weights and conditioning, individuals, and pick-up, if its in the off season.  If its in season, we have practice and weights.  This is the time we are all together as a team, working to be better.  I enjoy the time that I have with my teammates.  It makes the running and lifting weights easier just knowing that they will have my back no matter how good or bad I do that day.  After practice or workouts has to be my favorite time of the whole day because it’s the time when the team can just chill and hangout.  We all head to the caf together and have dinner, which has about the same things for dinner as they do for lunch.  Then after we have eaten in the caf, we head back to the dorms to hangout or study.  It is the best time of the day.  We talk about how we do not know how we made it through that last 15 (our sprints!) or how funny it was when one of us fell during lay-ups.  We spend time together that is needed to be a good team.  My day at Samford is filled with school, basketball, and my teammates.  The three things in my life that I thank God for giving me the opportunity to experience. 

The first month...as a freshman!

The following blog was written by freshman, Taylor Reece. Taylor (left) with teammates Christy Robinson and Kendall Schwantz comes to Samford from Brentwood, TN and just finished up her first month on campus!

My first month at Samford has been a complete whirlwind. So much is happening on campus at all hours, and it is difficult to keep up! Adjusting to college is definitely something that takes time. I am responsible for myself for the first time! It is a little scary, but Samford is such an incredible place with incredible people to help me out along the way. That is the most important thing I have learned over the past few weeks. I cannot expect to get everything right all the time because college is not something I am used to. I need to be encouraged and Samford is definitely a place where that happens consistently.

Basketball thus far has been a lot of hard work, but so much fun. Getting connected with the team has been a blast. Every girl on our team has a heart of gold and being with them everyday makes the tough workouts easier. Being a freshman comes with confusion about plays, weight training, well, really everything. These girls as well as the coaches have taken the time to help me and push me at the same time. Pre-season is coming to a close now and I am totally ready for practice and games to start up.

Being at college involves a lot more than I originally thought it would. I knew I would need to take the time to study and workout, but I completely forgot about making the time to clean my room or do my laundry. Those things were done for me and adjusting to that has been interesting. Also, managing my time has to be a conscious thing for me now, which it was not in high school, as Samford offers so many opportunities to get involved on campus, and I want to do them all! 

All in all, my experience thus far has been the best. I have made many new friends and I am getting into the swing of things in school and basketball. I look forward the rest of this year!

Life as a Nursing student...

The following was written by junior post player Hannah Dawson from Shelbyville, TN. Hannah is in her third year of the nursing program here at Samford and is on track to graduate as an RN in 2013!

The life of a nursing student involves one main thing, TIME MANAGEMENT. This is something that I had to learn quickly my first semester of nursing school, especially since that semester began during the end of regular season games and the beginning of the SOCON tournament. As a nursing student you spend an average (per week) of 8 hours in the classroom, 14 hours in the hospital and 2-4 hours studying each night (did I mention adding basketball into the mix). In order to make good grades, do well on the court and still stay sane, you must be able to manage your time well. Without time management and a good calendar with color coded pens for each thing, you life will end up being a completely stressful, loss of hair, crying mess. With time management, your life as a nursing student could be one of the most blessed lives you could ever have. 

Three days of the week you spend in the classroom learning about EVERYTHING. Every little thing that you could ever think of that happens to the body is learned in those three days each week. The other two days are spent in the hospital applying what you learned those three days in the classroom. Here comes the time management between classroom and hospital. You must be able to make time to learn, practice, and study all the material you went over in class before going to the hospital to be properly prepared to care for your patient that day. You can never come unprepared to the hospital seeing as how we are dealing with lives and what not. The hospital consists of a long grueling day of standing on your feet for 8-9 hours walking around giving baths and meds to patients, changing beds (with the patients in them), chasing Doctors around asking them what they just wrote down because their chicken scratch is completely illegible and much more and to be completely honest, it’s the most fun EVER! You must be able to manage your time well in order to care for all your patients and get done everything that needs to be done within the day but to be able to go in every day and know that you are going to do everything in your power to help save that persons life is truly one of the most amazing feelings in the world to have.

Hannah (center) with teammates Kylie Black (left) and Ruth Ketcham (right)

Now outside of the classroom and hospital is where it gets a little tricky (yes, as if the hospital wasn’t tricky enough). Seeing as how I am a student-athlete that means I must throw basketball in my busy schedule somewhere, along with studying. Once I am out of class/hospital, I am usually running to either the gym to practice or O’Henrys coffee shop to study, they know me by first name basis now. I go to practice for at least 2 hours a day 6 days a week.  I spend a total of 4 days of the week studying with a girl from my class at least 2 hours each day, we have been kicked out of the coffee shop a total of 5 times already (only a month into school!) because of being there so late...I feel like I live there sometimes!

Once I am done studying with Megan (my "study buddy") and basketball, the spare time I do have is spent goofing off with my teammates. It may seem like a lot to some but to me I wouldn’t have my life any other way. The life as a nursing student is truly the life to live!!! (Biased?? Probably.)

My Time...Is Study Time!

The following was written my Paige Anderson of Spring Garden, AL. Paige is a senior accounting major currently holding a 3.85 GPA.

One reason I chose to come to Samford was its high academic standards. I had always heard that a degree from Samford was definitely going to have a high standing in the working world, and since that’s what I’m going to have I sure hope that everybody is right! Although, just getting a degree from a school with high standards is great, it is definitely a plus to graduate with good grades on your transcript. To do that takes a lot of hard work and is actually pretty time consuming. This is how I do it!

First of all, I study like all the time! Just to clarify, I really really do NOT like to study. That seems to be a misconception about people who make good grades. Now that we have that cleared up I’ll tell you my everyday routine. I get up at about seven every morning (even when I don’t have class until one) and start reading some “awesome” accounting books with no color on the pages at all. Then, I move on to some great business law, and round my reading off with a few pages of income tax. Exciting right? Despite the fact that concentrating in that stuff is difficult in the morning, I usually make it through. Then, I go to class. After class, I go to basketball workouts (usually skills, weights and conditioning, and pick-up).  The next part is when it gets really difficult. When I get out of basketball, I really just want to get cleaned up and go to bed, BUT there’s still more studying to do! I usually get a few hours in at night, but sometimes, despite my best efforts, I give in to the things I really want to do like watch tv and actually talk to people. Imagine that, nerds actually have friends! Anyways,  I usually end up going to bed around eleven o’clock. Then, I get up the next day and start all over.

Now that you know my usual routine, I think you would be interested to know that I’m writing this while I need to be studying for my auditing and legal environment test!  As you can see, even with my best efforts to manage my time effectively, sometimes it just doesn’t really work out that way. I hope you enjoyed reading about my attempt to manage my time and make good grades while being a basketball player. Sorry if I bored you. I bore myself sometimes. That was a joke... But really I do!

Tornado Relief in Pratt City

The following blog was written by senior guard Jazmine Powers of Decatur, AL on her experience volunteering with tornado relief in Pratt City, Alabama.

We are all aware of the devastating storms that took place here in Alabama this year. Damage you wouldn’t believe took place all over Birmingham, Alabama and in particular  Pratt City. 

One morning I was approached by one of my good friends who plays on the football team named Devyn Keith. He informed me that he and some other football players were going to go into Pratt City and were going to help those in need. He asked if I wanted to go and at first I had already had plans to go back to my hometown in Decatur, Alabama and check on my family. As I was packing my clothes up something just hit me to go ahead and meet up with Devyn and the other players and go help. It was kind of unreal, to be honest, because I was literally packing up clothes to go home and all of a sudden I was thinking "man I really should go to Pratt City." So I ended up going with the guys, not knowing what to expect but knowing my heart was set on helping others. 

We got there and were immediately put to work at Scott Elementary school. This school was set up as a refuge place for victims. Classrooms were organized for different things and had people working to help victims with whatever they needed. They also had people in the kitchen serving food to victims. It was kind of chaotic and definitely something I had never seen before. Most of the girls who were there volunteering were in different classrooms with clothes sorting things out, but I wanted to stay busy. I unloaded trucks that constantly came in with water, food, clothes, etc.. with the guys. We did this for about a hour and a half until Devyn, Chase, Jeremy Towns, and another football player named Jacobi gathered in a truck to go out into neighborhoods. I definitely hopped in the truck along with them because I wanted to actively get out there and help people! This was an experience I will NEVER FORGET in my life. We loaded a pickup truck with mostly toiletries and food and set out into neighborhoods. I saw houses that looked completely fine then houses right next to them that were completely destroyed. I saw so many trees that had fallen on houses and completely destroyed them. I could go on and on about things I saw but there was one incident that really touched my heart. 

I carried a 24 package of water up to a house and knocked on the door. A middle aged woman who looked like she was in her 40s maybe,  came to the door. I said “Hi how are you,  do you need anything? I have water, toiletries, food, anything.” She stood there a moment and looked at me and then out to the truck with the guys. She said “Yes, I’ll take some water, can you bring it in.” I said of course and took the water into her house. I noticed she was there alone and had no power. Her house was damaged but not too badly. When I got inside she motioned me to put the water on her kitchen counter. Once I did that she just hugged me and said, "Thank you so much." She repeated those words to me. She said “Its good to know that there are people out there like you that really care and are out here helping us.” “God is good and I just want to thank you.” I noticed tears coming down her face. I replied “Your welcome, I’m just glad I can help.” My heart literally got weak that very moment. This touched my soul because here this lady is by herself and just experienced something so devastating and is crying, hugging me and thanking me and God. That moment taught me so much. 

I really was glad I chose to go out to Pratt City instead of home. I became more thankful than ever before, because that tornado could have easily hit the Samford University campus where I was at the time. I was thankful that I was able to be out in that lady’s neighborhood and inside her house giving her water. I felt like through God telling me to go ahead and go to Pratt City and me being with the people I was with and in that neighborhood inside her house, I felt like it gave her so much hope. Everything happens for a reason and according to God’s plan! That experience deepened my faith and I knew from that moment that God had that set up. I truly know people really appreciated that we were out there helping them and I’m so thankful and grateful that I was able to experience that.