BASKETBALL: Lady Chaps, Sainsbury ready for start of WJCAC

Probably no Lady Chap is more excited for the start of conference play than Nikki Sainsbury, a 5-foot-9 sophomore guard from Sydney, Australia.

The first semester was a frustrating one for Sainsbury, who suffered a stress fracture on a foot during the very first practice in August and missed the first 12 games of the season. She recently returned to the court and played in the last two games. Even though they were losses, Sainsbury was glad she was able to help her team more than just with moral support.

Nikki Sainsbury

"Being one of the only two returners on the team, I'm super excited to get back in," she said. "Hopefully, I'll help this team and do whatever I can to help get off to a really good start in conference."

Having Sainsbury's knowledge should help the young Lady Chaps navigate through the competitive WJCAC schedule. Only her and fellow sophomore Frida Schmidt, who experienced her own injury early in the season, were the only returning players for longtime head coach Ron Jones. They must combine to bring the rest of the team up to speed, which Jones admits has been a slower process than he would have liked.

"It's here and it's time to become more consistent and play to the level I know that we're capable of playing," Jones said. "I guess if I had to pick one area of improvement is to be more consistent with our effort and that goes into defending, rebounding, running a break. At times, we do it well and at other times, we just don't play the way we need to for 40 minutes. That's the sign of an immature team. We're practicing as hard as we can to get that fixed. I'm confident that we can still do it but we have four conference games in our first 10 days. It's here, it's on top of us and we have to meet the challenge."

Sainsbury knows it's going to be important for her and Schmidt to help the younger players understand what it's going to take to win in the WJCAC.

"Obviously, conference is very different from preseason," she said. "There's a lot more scouting, we play the teams in conference (twice) so I think being able to lead this team and show the girls how important it is to scout the other team and understand our opponents. With me finally being back on the court, I need to be able to bring up the energy on defense, help execute on offense and just help those girls.

"Knowing who you're guarding, knowing your opponent, knowing their strengths, knowing their weaknesses is super important in conference."

Sainsbury said even though the team has had its ups and downs this season, she's excited about starting conference and looks forward to what her team can do.

"Obviously, we've had a tough preconference part of the season," she said. "I think it will be exciting to see everything we've learned and everything we've put in since the start of the season and see how we're going to execute that. Going to Howard for that first game and they've got some returners, some new girls and we'll get to see how our team will show up against some of those new girls."

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