It is a quick transition for WNBA’s rookies. One day, you are playing in the NCAA tournament with your university team, and a week or two later, you are recruited and official is a professional basketball player. A week after that, you are in the training camp for your WNBA season. In just one month, the university is over, he began his career and his life has made a complete turn of 180 degrees.
Because of that, it is totally reasonable for a rookie to take everything in the training camp. They have bone thrown into a new system conspired with new coaches and new teammates, now a small fish in a fixed ocean. They are also living their dreams, finally playing in the WNBA, everyone looks a little wide and amazed eye during the first week of the season.
The WNBA training camp has just begun, but multiple rookie have already experienced media day and are adapting to their new roles. Washington’s mystics had three of the first six draft teams, obtaining Sonia Citron, Kiki Iriafen and Georgia Amore in the process. The mystics are in the middle of a reconstruction, and these rookies hope to be part of the next generation of this franchise.
“It has been competitive going against the greats who have been in the league for a long time and having to win my control,” Iriafen said on Mystics media day. “We are learning a lot and our coaches do a great job by making sure we understand everything.”
The training camp is a short period of time, and players must demonstrate their worth. To reinforce coaches that the skills for which these WNBA teams explore them are still there, while trying to show their versatility. For Iriafen, that means showing Washington that you can shoot triples.
“My coaches encourage me to shoot my three,” Iriafen said about the objectives of his training field. “I have shot it a lot in practice and I stayed late to make my shots. I know that is key in this league, if I am playing the 4, maybe 3.”
Of course, there are challenges for rapid change between the university season and the WNBA training camp. Learn a new terminology, what your new coaches need you and only the differentiation in the routines that come with a new joint team. Another important factor is that WNBA is inherently a more physical league than NCAA, and the rhythm is much faster than university basketball.
A reminder of how fast things happened in the WNBA, the quotes of the morning thesis gathered, when it was announced that Amore broke his ACL, both changing and the history of the mystics arcan almost immediately.
For Sonia Citron, there is a balance between acclimatizing when discovering what their coaches train because of it. “I’m walking everything, being a sponge,” Citron said. “Learn from coaches, learn from veterinarians, learn from our teammates and just try to be a good rookie.”
Throughout the country in Seattle, another new new new group is competing for places in the Seattle storm list. Unlike the mystics, the storm has the pieces to make a playoff race this season. There are not many places for rookies to remain on the list, so the training camp is more competitive in a certain sense. With that hard reality in mind, rookies Serena Sundell, Jordan Hobbs and Madison Conner are only trying to take everything possible from her team veterans.
“Only in the two short days that have been the training camp, I feel that I have already been able to grow my game,” said Jordan Hobbs. Hobbs played in Michigan, I’m not sure it would only be recruited in the WNBA. He had a line of work in the corporate sector and was ready to move from basketball. However, after the year, he had a Michigan and the way the Wolverines season ended, he knew that in his intestine he had not yet taken the sport. While I was in the All-Star, he combined in the Final Four Four, called that job and told them that he would pursue basketball after graduation. Now, she is in Seattle competing for a place on the list.
“It is only one leg 180, but I am very grateful for it and blessed to be in this position here,” Hobbs said about his decision.
A recurring feeling of rookies is how well their university programs prepared them for this opportunity. The six players were recruited in Elite University Basketball programs such as USC, Notre Dame, Michigan and more, programs that have been producing WNBA players for decades. Now is the time that they apply all the skills that they learned at the University to their professional basketball careers.
As WNBA grows, more newbies have the possibility of making WNBA lists. It is becoming a more reality reality to pursue basketball after university, and despite the rapid change, these rookies would want to be anywhere else.