My Life as a Player III

In her third diary entry, Nichole Jackson describes her game-day routine for Auburn Riverside's season opener against White River.

Entry No. 3 / Dec. 12, 2006

Editor's Note: Nichole submitted this entry weeks ago; as we were in the midst of holiday tournament coverage, we held the piece until now. Please enjoy.

Game day is best part of basketball after all that hard work at practice. This is how my day went on December 8, 2006:

At 6:30 a.m. the annoying alarm clock started going off and I was thinking to myself it can’t be that time yet, it feels like I just fell asleep. That probably was the case because that night I couldn’t fall asleep. I was tossing and turning in bed thinking about my game the next night. So I turned the alarm clock off and dragged my butt out of bed! The whole team started off in coach’s room at 7:55 a.m. sharp (and a set of lines for every minute late by every player) to drink orange juice. We as a team drink orange juice every morning because our coach says we need to stay healthy, and to get our vitamin C so we can have a great season.

While we were drinking our orange juice, my coach had noticed that one of our freshmen, Mercedes Wetmore, did not have her team sweatshirt on like we had planned the night before. So he said you know people who don’t dress with the right game day attire don’t play for me, and I remember the look on her face. She was like, "What?" Then she pulled out her phone to call her father to the rescue. He had to bring her sweatshirt from home after driving back from Tacoma for work so she could play. That’s just one of the great freshmen stories you will hear because we have three on the team. Then the education part came and the bell rang for first period.

Nichole vs. White River

Lunchtime rolled around, which is the best part of the school day because I’m with four of my girls from my team and my coach. Coach Adam Barrett never gets any privacy at all; we are always in his space. So school gets out and we have to be at walk-around in 10 minutes so everybody is kind of running right after school to the gym to get their right gear on. Our walk-around should also be called our sprint-around because it's just like practice but shorter. We go over a couple things, get some shots up and than head home. We get out at about 3:10 and have to be back by 4:10 p.m. to head to White River High School on the bus. By that time I can feel my stomach starting to get nervous and my hands getting a little sweaty because I’m so nervous. So we meet back at the school at 4:15 and get on the bus to head to our game. The bus driver drops the JV off and then the freshmen and we head to Subway. As tradition, the varsity always goes to Subway on away games. Then after a good meal we head back to the gym to cheer our junior-varsity team on and get focused for the game.

Before every game I listen to slow cuts on my Ipod to get myself focused and to relax. Then at the end of halftime for JV we head to the locker room to get dressed and whatever other pre-game rituals we have to do before coach talks to us. By that time my blood is flowing and the girls on my team are just getting super pumped and ready for the game. We do our warmup cheer than head out for our drills. After the drills the non-starters were called, then the starters. Then it was what we were all waiting for:

GAME TIME.

The game started off a little rough. We just had too much energy and it was our first game of the season. We were like race horses trying to get out of gate. But after the first quarter we went on a run. At halftime we had a pretty good lead over White River. We came out of the locker room and the third quarter was a struggle again. There were a few letdowns, but we still maintained a pretty good lead throughout the whole game. The game was intense the whole time. It was an awesome feeling, beating a strong White River program which has won their league the last couple of years.

I would like to give props to one of the players on my team - Gina Hagerty who had in amazing game coming of the bench and having 10 points against a very good team. I would really like to see her do that more this season and step up like she did because we know she can do it now, she showed us all. I think we had a pretty good game and that this season is going to be a fun one because our whole team can play. Our bench is 10 deep; on any given day someone can step up. We all have very good chemistry together out on the floor.

After the game we were pretty happy but we still know we have a lot of work ahead of us to get to State and play in the Washington State 3A championship game on March 10, 2006.

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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.