Interview with Head Women's Bowling Coach Brad Hagen
Coming off of a huge win against SFA, how did that feel?
I hear it's a good thing, the rivalry between the two schools. Its a nice bragging rights. Something we wanna continue to see and see this as an ongoing trend as long as possible.We don't like to loose against powerhouses- so we definitely don't wanna loose against our rival.
Yall are heading out to a tournament this weekend. How do you think we will do?
I feel pretty confident. Optimistically, confident we should say. The fields a little bit smaller than anticipated- there is only 8 teams competing. However, 6 out of the 8 teams are pre-season ranked, so it'll be a positive in regards to strength in schedule. We are optimistic that we will do just as good as we did last year if not better. Last year we took second. Last year we prepared for the tournament to the best of our knowledge and we didn't have all the right equipment.Keeping the things in mind that we learned last year from this event we are gonna go up there much more prepared and hopefully the results will show that we did so.
How do you feel the team is coming together after the one match against SFA?
The experience and depth of the team has definitely increased. With Michelle and Elise, the newcomers to the team, the dynamics have grown even stronger. We have started some new traditions and overall the dynamics of the team are positive. We have actually increased some of our goals and standards on the team and that's promising. We just have to keep ourselves straight and see that we don't second guess ourselves and stick to what we know we are capable of. This weekend will be our first true test and we are staying optimistically positive and hopefully things will go our way this weekend.
During the Oral Roberts Press Conference, one of the things mentioned was the student athlete ease of travel throughout the season. Your team, by far, travels farther than any other SH team. How hard is that on the girls and how much does it impact school schedules?
It's not as bad as it may appear. Its nice to add Oral Roberts to the Southland Conference and we welcome them if they decided to have a bowling team. The biggest thing is, we know what we have to do to get to where we want to go. To get to the bigger tournaments we have to travel, we have to have the strength of schedule and quality opponents. The athletic department as a whole understands that. They bought into it prior to last year and they saw the results of it at the end of the year. So, its even more important this year that we continue to do the same. With my team I emphasize accountability, integrity and staying on top of our academic obligations. We do have the proper protocols and steps in place to see that nobody gets behind. I think that it helps us on the road that we also have access to the internet and other things. They do have full access to academics when we are not bowling and that's the biggest thing. We start things off right at the beginning of the year and that carries forward because we are the most traveling team in the athletic department, if not in the country, in regards to our sport. Its important that we manage the academics first and the bowling second..
Preseason Poll has you guys ranked at number 7. Are you satisfied with that ranking or are you a little disappointed?
I'm ok with it. By far we are not the 7th ranked team in the country and I think things do still get overlooked, including us. I feel that individuals overlooked our team and just looked at the numbers from last year. However, there are a lot of positives to being number 7 and not being something higher. We have a lot of goals this year and I feel that the pre-season poll is just extra fire to fuel us and push the girls to prove ourselves and that we are worthy of a higher ranking. We are firm believers in "actions speak louder than words." Long term, the heart and fire of this team is going to set precedents over anyone's opinion. Preseason poll doesn't matter as much as where we end up at the end of the year. It really helps us and only shoots the other teams in the foot who are ranked higher than us when we beat them. We are really going to use this to our advantage as a positive as we work up the food chain with our ultimate goal of being in Cleveland.
Photo Credit: gobearkats.com
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