Keeping In Touch With Erica Schiefen

Nov. 24, 2006

What a weekend we had! The Third Annual St. Bona Shootout was a great event for us, yet again. I really enjoyed coming home and receiving all the great support I get from the people of the Elmira-Corning area. It is wonderful to have such a friendly and supportive place to be able come home to, especially one that supports women's basketball as much as the people here do. It was a great experience.

The Shootout kicked off on Friday night with a dinner at the Corning Headquarters for all of the teams and the tournament sponsors. Everyone had a good time touring some of the glass artwork at the Headquarters, chatting with friends, and eating the delicious food. The best part about the dinner was the dessert platter. My table had a contest to see who would be the person to pick up the last dessert as we passed it around the table. It ended up being me, but I did not win the "prize" because I did not finish all my desserts. It ended up being too much for me; I needed to be able to run up and down the floor the next day!

The tournament games started the following evening. The games did not exactly turn out the way we would have liked. On Saturday, my entire team was antsy all day to get on the court. We had to wait until 6:00 PM to play our game against Columbia University. That anxiousness to play showed in the way that we played the game. We hurried everything on offensive and played a very sloppy game right from the beginning, culminating 23 total turnovers. However, we were still able to pull out the 69-57 win, putting us in the position to play the University of Buffalo on Sunday and defend our tournament title. Unfortunately, things did not go as planned on Sunday. First off, right when we were about to leave our hotel and head to the game, we learned that our bus would not start. So we had to wait for some of our St. Bonaventure staff to come rescue us with the Bonaventure vans and take us to the game. I suppose that it was a bad omen for how our game would go. In the championship game, we just never seemed to get it all together. We never got the big stops we needed on defense nor did we ever get into too much of a flow offensively and we sent them to the free throw line far too often, costing us a 67-59 loss to the Bulls. Everyone was very disappointed that we did not earn the beautiful glass champion trophies and we did not have a very good bus ride back to Olean. We really need to learn to put together 40 hard minutes of basketball so that we can get the wins that we should. It was very disappointing that my team and I did not meet our goal of defending our tournament title in my hometown.

I would like to thank everyone for the tremendous job that they did putting on the tournament. All the players and coaches had a really good time the entire weekend. My team kept telling me how much they love my town and all the people. It made me very proud that they enjoyed my home so much and it made me proud of where I come from. Thank you for everyone's support and I look forward to coming back next year and reclaiming our title!

Go Bonnies!