Omaha Nebraska

Omaha, NE- The Dixie State women’s basketball team visited the 3rd grade classrooms at Central Park Elementary School in Omaha, NE. They spent the morning reading and doing crafts with the students of Ms. Larson’s and Ms. Pederson’s classrooms. “It was a great opportunity for our student-athletes to work with students from a different socio-economic background. The students seemed to really respond to our girls,” stated Coach Kristensen. The 3rd grade students were then able to eat lunch with the girls and finished the visit with questions about athletics and college. “At Central Park they put a big emphasis on going to college and having goals. I thought it was great that we were able to provide them with some answers on how to get there and hopefully serve as role models,” says Coach Kristensen.

Bulldogs stand out to play for Dixie

Johnna Brown drew plenty of recruiting interest to play Division I softball or basketball.
But the Centennial senior signed with Division II Dixie State in order to play both.
"It's going to be exciting to see how it turns out," Brown said. "A lot of coaches didn't want to work with me to play two (sports)."
Brown will be joined in women's basketball at Dixie State by Centennial teammates Deanna Daniels and Rashawnda Gray, who also signed with the Rebels during the early signing period (Nov. 12 to 19).
"We were fortunate to get (Brown) because she could have played Division I basketball," said Dixie State coach Angela Kristensen, who envisions the 6-foot Brown playing small forward. "She'll be one of those special kids. It's tough to be an impact player as a freshman, but Johnna has the potential to do that."
At Centennial, Brown is a starting outside hitter in volleyball, forward in basketball and shortstop in softball. She was an all-state selection in basketball and softball as a junior.
"Johnna wanted to go and do multiple sports," Bulldogs basketball coach Karen Weitz said. "(Dixie State) was kind of the window of opportunity for her."
Brown was close to scheduling a visit to Florida State for softball but finally sided with Dixie State to play two sports.
Overlap of schedules will be a hurdle with the Rebels. Dixie State's basketball season ends in March, and softball begins in February.
"The two (Dixie State) coaches talked, and they said, 'We would work it out,' " Brown said.
The Centennial basketball team has attended summer camps on the Dixie State campus, which turned out to be a key to the Bulldogs trio signing with the St. George, Utah, school.
"We'd mess around and say, 'If the three of us go here, that'd be pretty cool,' " Brown said.
Daniels, a power forward, attracted Division I interest from schools including UC Irvine, Weitz said. Gray, a wing who is out for the season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament, took a visit to San Diego.
But the chance for the trio to play together in Division II apparently was more appealing than playing separately in Division I.

Updates

I realized this week that I haven’t done a very good job of updating this blog – so I am going to try and play catch up. So far it has been filled with a season of some highs and lows but still I am overall very happy with the girls.

We started off with two games in southern California playing San Bernardino and UC San Diego – two teams who made the national tournament last year. We didn’t play very well against Bernardino and ended up losing 62-57. I felt that was a game we could have very easily won, but didn’t play up to our potential. Then we traveled to San Diego a team that starts five girls above 6’0. They also played in the national tournament last year. We battled with them the entire game, got down in the second half by 13 – but came back to tie it. We ran out of gas and came up short and had to foul in the end. Final score was 71-61. I feel this team will be a top team in our region and felt like we were right there – so I took some positives from the weekend even though we went 0-2.

The next weekend we were again on the road at Chico State! We played the host school first and they hadn’t lost a game in 24 home game win streak, which was huge. Chico made the national tournament last year as well and were picked this year to win the CCAA. I was so proud of our girls as we played well. It was a bitter sweet victory though because we lost, Jessica Carver to a season ending knee injury. That is the fourth player from last year’s starting squad that is missing from this team - talk about adversity! Saturday we played Sonoma State – another team that made the national tournament last year. It was a back and forth game, but we just didn’t have enough gas and lost 70-63. This puts us at 1-3.

This past weekend we got to go back to the Midwest. Two of our seniors and Coach Larson are from Iowa (Lindsey Chettinger and Courtney Boyd) along with myself being from South Dakota. We spent Thanksgiving at the Chettinger’s and ate more food than you can possibly imagine! We pretty much ate Iowa right off the map! Saturday we played University of South Dakota – who was National Champion Runner’s up last year at NCAA DII. This year they made the jump to Division I. With four minutes to play in the game we were all tied up – then we only score one point in the final minutes. We had good looks they just didn’t fall and lost 80-62.

Monday we traveled to College of Saint Mary, which is the college that I coached at before coming to Dixie State. We won that game by a score of 100-67. It was a great game for some of our younger girls to get some minutes.

That puts us at 2-4 but we have had a pretty challenging schedule up to this point. We FINALLY have home games this weekend when we host our tournament.

We have had some bad luck with injuries but that is a part of the game. We just have to try different things to get the job done and they are responding well. I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and we appreciate your support!