This week I had the chance to sit down with senior Haleigh Releford from the women’s basketball team. We started by talking broadly about how the season’s been. “The season has been great,” said Releford. “We started out a little bit slow, and then we hit conference play and kind of went on a little bit of a run. We actually made history at Asbury for most wins in a row at 12… I couldn’t ask for a better senior season.”
Next, we talked about the state of the team this season. “We look pretty good,” Releford stated. “We’ve got kind of a younger team, but they’re still growing in their positions. We’ve had two new girls come this year. Obviously, we had our incoming freshmen, but we had a transfer sophomore from Transy, and then we had a transfer from… one of the Carolinas maybe? Liz [Boyd] and Emily [Sizemore] have been a really big part of this team and are making us even better than we were before, so we’re super grateful to have them. We’ve all just been playing really well together this season. I couldn’t ask for a better team.”
After, I asked her about the difference-makers on the team, to which she said, “I mean, everyone knows their role, whether they get any minutes [of playing time] or they don’t, so it’s that factor of hearing the bench talking to us whenever we’re playing… and then the girls who are starting, we all have our roles. I would say that Emily Sizemore, the sophomore from Transy, came in and really gave us a good run. This is her first year of collegiate basketball, so she’s been a really big help to us. She played softball at Transy. You have Cam Poole, she’s a sophomore, and she’s been a really big help to us too on the second-string, kind of getting them going… We all have our ways of being difference-makers on the team. Like I said, every girl has had a role this year, and they’ve made sure to fill it.”
“It’s a super big honor to have received that,” said Releford when asked about being named athlete of the week. “Everyone else is just as deserving. I really think our big game against Wesleyan really set that out. My teammates were getting me the ball… We had several girls with over three or four assists that game. It was really just about feeding each other the ball. It was a really fun game to play. I guess that’s where it really all came into play because I only had seven points [in] the game prior, so coming in against Wesleyan, we were ready because we knew we had to win this game to secure our number two spot in the conference. Shoutout to my teammates. They were the ones pitching me the ball.”
Concerning personal and team goals, Releford said, “Personally, I have reached a milestone that I’d been dreaming about since I was a little girl, and that was to come to college and to enjoy it. I also had always had a dream about joining the thousand-point club. I didn’t get to do that in high school, so I was super blessed and honored to be able to do it here. Again, shoutout to my teammates for dishing me the ball. Team goals, obviously we wanted to go out and get Asbury in the books for women’s basketball. We want to do something that’s never been done before. We want to go out there and get that national title. We want to go to the NCAA, we don’t want to go to the NCCAA. Obviously, we’re going to be welcomed in both, but we’re really going for that NCAA championship national title. We fully believe we can do it. We’ve got the talent, we’ve got the coaches, we’ve got the support from our fans here. I think we can do it.”
Finally, I asked if she had a message for the rest of the Asbury student body. Releford answered, “We’ve already had our last home games. Even if your support is from afar, we’re still going to appreciate that. If you haven’t been to a basketball game, or any sporting event on campus, I really encourage everyone to get out there and do it. It’s fun, it makes us feel special, it makes us have way better games, and feel so much support from the fans.”
Photo courtesy of AU Athletics.
