Captain's Log: Morgan Stroman Blog
A few timesa week, Morgan Stroman, one of the senior captains on the women’s basketballteam will be writing a blog of the team’s happenings. She has been an intragalpart of the team’s transformation into a ACC and nationally-recognizedprogram.
Out of highschool, Stroman was a three-time South Carolina Gatorade Player of the Year,won four consecutive state championships and was named a McDonald’sAll-American. After her sophomore season at Miami, Stroman was named third-team All-ACC and helped guide the Canes totheir first ACC regular-season championship.
Midwaythrough her junior season, Stroman tore her Achilles’ tendon in a game atVirginia. She missed the rest of the season. However, after an intense rehab, she was ready for her senior season. She currentlyleads her team in rebounding, steals, blocks and double-doubles and is secondon the squad in scoring.
Below isMorgan’s first blog entry for HurricaneSports.com.
Even though wehave had a bumpy start on the road this season, we pulled it out last nightwith the big win! Losses at Maryland, Florida Stateand Virginia are already on our résuméand have been tough on the team. They’ve also been tough on me as a captain andsenior. With that devastating feeling, we had to think of something to change.Was it our energy? Was it us lacking the support of each other? Were we notplaying hard? The answer to all of the questions was that we didn’t do any ofit. We didn’t have energy, support each other and we weren’t playing hardenough.
Something hadto give with our attitudes versus our next opponent Wake Forest, the sameopponents who knocked us out the ACC Tournament last year. In preparation forthe game, Coach Meier didn’t take any steps back. With the next practice beingone of the toughest practices in a long time after the harsh loss to UVA, wesoon bounced back.
We as captains, only wanted to make our teambetter. ‘How do you do that?’ is a questionthat I asked myself many times in the past. Stefanie(Yderstrom), Pepper (x) and I took aleap and decided to meet with each other on how were going to make each otherbetter and pass it on to our fellow teammates. In my opinion, it isn’t allabout the X’s and O’s,it’s the little things that you don’t think matter.
With a lessonin our back pockets on our journey to Winston-Salem, we learned that you havetwo types of pain: the pain of discipline and the pain of regret. The pain ofregret weighs so much more than the pain of discipline. Suiting up for the gamewe could only go out and do what we were told and that was to have each other’sback and get excited for each other. That led to playing hard and in the end, a79-78 win. There was never a moment of doubt and we had so much composure, evenwhen the Demon Deacons were on top. That win just may have started somethingspecial for my Hurricanes.
-Stro
