Boilers stay off the court, but still work in summer
>>Print ViewPublication Date: 10/07/2009
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Coach Sharon Versyp may be limited with what contact she’s allowed to make with her team, but that doesn’t stop the Boilermakers from conducting team-building exercises.
Over the summer, Versyp said they aren’t allowed to do anything with the team on the court, but she did have them read “The Five People You Meet In Heaven.”
“I’ll still do the team building stuff that I continue to do,” she said. “That’s like reading a book for us to spend time and get to know each other in depth off the court, and then obviously once basketball gets rolling around with on-the-court stuff with what their roles are ... things start progressing.”
Senior guard Jodi Howell appreciated the exercise.
“We all read it and the next weekend we all met and talked about it,” Howell said. “It was something that I probably wouldn’t have read had she not told us to read it, and I think it really helped us come together and see where we’re at as a team.”
Howell added that the freshmen weren’t a part of the reading because they weren’t at Purdue yet.
Before suffering a season-ending injury to her Achilles tendon, sophomore guard Chantel Poston said that she needed more time if she was going to talk about the book.
She may be injured, but she said the exercise has had positive outcomes for the team as a whole.
“There’s so many lessons to read in that book,” Poston said. “I could talk about it all day, but it was really good. I think we came closer and really understood each other more after reading it.”
The Boilermakers plan to hold another activity like this, before the season starts on Nov. 7, that will also include the freshmen.