My Life as a Player II

In the second entry of her player diary, Nichole Jackson, a sophomore guard at Auburn Riverside High School in Auburn, Wash., describes her team's road trip to Oregon State University to visit former teammate Julie Futch.

Entry No. 2 / December 8, 2006

Last weekend's road trip to Oregon State University in Corvallis, Ore., created team bonding and very special memories for the Auburn Riverside girls.

It all started off at 6:30 a.m. (which is too early on a Saturday morning ) with the whole team meeting at Auburn Riverside. On the way down, we made a couple of pit stops, one of which was Starbucks. Our post Stephanie Wilber is a fiend for Starbucks! We then headed to the Woodburn outlet mall to the Nike outlet for some athletic gear. We always love it when we go to Oregon because we get new gear at the outlets. Then we had to stop to get some food, of course. One of the cars with coach Crystal Conant headed to Subway and my car, with head coach Adam Barrett driving, headed to Arby’s (mmmm).

After lunch and a drive, during which we played games Stephanie Wilber thought up, we finally arrived at OSU to watch the men’s basketball team play. It was a great experience, sitting right on the floor and cheering them on. The OSU women’s basketball team, including our former

Julie Futch (by OSU Athletics)

teammate Julie Futch, sat with us! Julie was the main reason we went to OSU. We are her fan club and we wanted to watch her and her teammates play Birmingham on Sunday. After the men’s game, the OSU women's coaching staff took us on a tour of the whole facility and the football field.

We went to OSU later that afternoon to practice on the Gill Coliseum floor because Coach Barrett said we had to get a workout in. It was an awesome experience to play on that court; you really can visualize how it would feel to play in a facility at the college level. Then we went out for Mexican food and of course dessert at Cold Stone Creamery. Our former teammate Julie Futch was with us the entire day. It was so much fun to see her again because we all miss her and wanted to support her at college. That night we all stayed up late and had a lot of good fun.

When Sunday morning rolled around, some of the Riverside girls got up to watch OSU’S walk- around before their game that afternoon. Julie’s coaches are all so cool and easy going. It really is a nice atmosphere. The entire coaching staff made all of us feel at home the whole weekend. After the walk-around, we headed to the bookstore to purchase some t-shirts and markers to make shirts for Futch back at the hotel. Around 2 p.m,. the cleaning ladies showed up and kicked us out of our rooms to clean (all you hoopers know how messy your rooms get on the overnight team trips - lol)!!! We all finished up our shirts and grabbed our gear to head out for some lunch.

The OSU women’s game was great and the team gave the Birmingham-Southern team a pretty good schooling (82-39). After the game we hung out and talked to Julie for a while and then packed up the car for our four-hour drive home. On the way back, Coach Barrett thought he was funny by rolling down the windows and freezing us to death for what seemed like an eternity, and then cranked up the heat so we were sweating to death.

It is all good, though, because we are all cooking up payback for him when he least expects it to happen!

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Nichole Jackson has been a fixture on HoopGurlz.com, as she was a perennial selection to all-tournament teams in youth-basketball events conducted by the website. Last year, Nichole started as a freshman for Auburn Riverside, which advanced to the semifinals of the Washington State 4A tournament. As a sophomore this year, Nichole will run the point for a team expected to be one of the top two in the Washington State 3A classification. A member of the National Honor Society, Nichole hopes to study communications in college and go into broadcasting. Click here to view Nichole's player profile.