Women’s hoops team focuses on building team chemistry

This year’s Castleton College women’s basketball team is taking a new mentoring approach to ensure success.  

In an effort to make new players feel more comfortable, returning players “paired up with incoming freshmen as a big sister-little sister type of program,” said senior center Meghan O’Sullivan.  

“We thought it was important for our players to start to establish friendships and develop some team chemistry.  It made the seven freshman feel welcome to Castleton and the woman’s basketball program,” said coach Tim Barrett.

O’Sullivan talked excitedly about being able to make her incoming teammates feel comfortable by offering them a familiar face.

Their efforts seem to be paying off, according to some of the freshmen.

“It’s like a family away from your family,” said freshman center Amanda Beatty when asked her favorite part of being on the team.

And senior point guard Jade Desroches said the returning players are liking it too. “You automatically have 13 really good friends,” she said.

The team lost six seniors last year after making school history by going to the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA tournament..

Both O’Sullivan and Desroches emphasized that a lot of different people must take leadership roles on the team.  

“I am excited to see who steps up, when people step up, and how they step up on the court,” said O’Sullivan.

Even though so many seniors were lost last year, that hasn’t changed the mindsets of the current players.

“Jade and I have cut down three nets in three years, so it would be nice to get the fourth one and to hold ourselves to the same status that every other year has and not let a different team give us less of a goal,”  O’Sullivan said.

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