While the Penn women’s basketball team will play just its third game Sunday, its freshmen are gaining experience by the minute.
The Quakers (0-2) returned 10 players from last year’s team, so the freshman class of Keiera Ray, Rayne Connell and Brooklyn Juday has to play catch-up to a team full of experience.
The Red and Blue will face Army (2-1) in West Point, N.Y., looking for their first win of the season. In order for the Quakers to have success at Army and in the future, they will need to rely on minutes from their first-year players, who are just getting acclimated to both school and the team.
All but one of the 42 minutes played by Penn’s freshmen have come from Keiera Ray, the Quakers’ second-leading scorer behind junior Alyssa Baron. Despite gaining early experience, the games are still moving quickly for Ray.
“The transition [to college] hasn’t been as hard as I thought it would be,” Ray said. “But the game is a lot faster in college than in high school. Throughout each game, it has really been a lot quicker.”
On the other side of the spectrum is Brooklyn Juday, who has not seen the court yet this season. The Tipton, Ind., native has been adjusting to a completely new practice schedule to add to the new environment at Penn.
“In high school, my team practiced for an hour and a half at most, so coming in and practicing for three hours was definitely a change for me,” Juday said. “We practice more often than we did in high school, but there is more to work on, so we need the extra practice.”
While others would be less receptive to the struggles to adjust to college athletics, coach Mike McLaughlin sympathizes with the freshman as a former college basketball player himself at Holy Family.
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“What we have to understand is that it is a process,” McLaughlin said. “There is so much they have to go through on a daily basis to get acclimated to school, the regiment of a Division I basketball team and the weight room, so it is a process.”
While the team obviously aims to win each game it plays, McLaughlin understands that he must weigh going for the ‘W’ against working freshmen into the lineup.
“There has to be a balance for everything you do,” McLaughlin said. “Some freshmen are more apt to [play] quickly because of what your needs may be or where their prior coaching has been to that point. We are constantly coaching everyone, let alone the three freshmen. We just try putting them in situations that will hopefully help further them along.”
When the Red and Blue hit the floor, you can be sure McLaughlin will put the freshmen on the floor with a chance to gain exposure.
“A lot of it is nothing more than getting experience,” McLaughlin said. “But sometimes a little baptism by fire here with what they do is not a bad thing.”
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