Chiney (14) traded to LA Sparks; Markisha (07) and Melanie (11) moving on

Sparks trade for Chiney Ogwumike


The Los Angeles Sparks have agreed to trade their 2020 first-round pick to the Connecticut Sun in exchange for Chiney Ogwumike, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. This move will reunite Chiney with her sister and former league MVP Nneka Ogwumike.


With Chiney on board, the Sparks have moved from title contention to the championship favorite. Chiney, the No. 1 pick in the 2014 draft, returned to her star self last season after she was hampered by injuries. The former Rookie of the Year missed the entire 2015 season due to micro-fracture surgery in her knee, and the 2017 season due to an Achilles injury in China. Chiney returned in 2018 and averaged 14 points on 60 percent shooting, and seven rebounds. Much like her sister, she’s a bruiser in the paint with excellent finishing abilities in the low post.


The Sparks are nearly complete with a team that should compete for a title even without the long-rumored move for last year’s MVP-runner up Liz Cambage. LA is expected to re-sign all-star point guard Chelsea Gray, and has already retained defensive star Alana Beard, former MVP Candace Parker, Nneka, and selected Baylor star Kalani Brown with the No. 7-overall pick in April’s draft.


Sparks fans have every reason to be thrilled with the trade for Chiney. The team’s centerpiece, Parker, now has the ultimate relief in the post. The Ogwumike’s and Brown should take the burden of battling down low with true bigs and boxing out for rebounds off the versatile point-forward. Chiney is also as reliable as they come to cleanup shots around the rim.


For the Sun, gaining a first-round pick is critical as they try and grow a talented roster into an elite one. Clearing Ogwumike means more minutes for young stars with high potential like 2019 No. 9 pick Kristine Anigwe and 25-year-old Jonquel Jones. Connecticut will run for a playoff spot this season, but they might not have the components for a big run just yet. Maybe an extra pick next season can convert into another star through the draft or by trade.


The rest of the WNBA should be gearing up to face the Los Angeles Sparks, however. The Ogwumike sisters on the same team will be a problem few can handle.

 

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Major coaching changes at two Atherton schools
Two of the Peninsula top basketball coaches have stepped down from their posts over the last several weeks. Menlo-Atherton’s Markisha Coleman and Sacred Heart Prep’s Melanie Murphy have both stepped aside after five-year runs at their respective schools. Coleman will be taking over at Eastside College Prep, her alma mater. There was no word on Murphy’s future.
“I understand the allure of going back to Eastside College Prep,” M-A co-athletic director Steven Kryger said. “She had tears in her eyes when she told me. She told me this (the ECP position) is the only job she would leave M-A for.” 


Coleman, a 2007 Stanford graduate where she walked on to the Stanford women’s basketball team before earning a full scholarship her junior and senior years, was in the unenviable position of having to replace the legendary Pam Wimberly, who had guided the M-A girls’ program for 41 years. Beginning in 1968 and lasting through the 2012 season. Coleman was an assistant for two years under Morgan Clyburn, Wimberly’s immediate replacement, before moving into the head coach’s chair beginning the 2014-15 season.

After taking the coaching reins, the Bears returned to the top of public school basketball on the Peninsula. In her five years, Coleman compiled a Peninsula Athletic League South Division record of 55-5. Overall, Coleman had a win-loss record of 120-37, winning 20 games or more four straight years. She just missed the 20-win plateau this season, finishing 19-12. Her teams qualified for the Central Coast Section tournament all five years, including a pair of invitations to the CCS Open Division. The Bears made two CCS championship games, falling short in 2015 and again in 2018 and had a CCS record of 8-6. The team qualified for the Northern California bracket all five years of Coleman’s tenure, going 6-5 and advancing to the Division I semifinals in 2016 and the Division IV finals this past season.

“I think she is a phenomenal role model for the girls,” Kryger said. “Here’s a woman … who carries herself with class and respect. She demonstrates to [the players] how much she cares for them, while also holding them to a high standard on and off the court.”

Coleman be will taking over an Eastside College Prep program that is among the best in the state. She is replacing Donovan Blythe, who spent the last dozen years as the Panthers’ head coach. He already left for China to run a basketball academy. Blythe led the Panthers to back-to-back Division V state titles in 2016 and 2017.

Murphy had a very similar path as Coleman. Murphy is also a former Stanford player who graduated in 2011. She also was coming into a program where expectations were high as the team was a little more than a decade removed from their last of 10 CCS titles. While the Gators always seemed to struggle in West Bay Athletic League play — they were just 18-36 in league play under Murphy — she always had the team ready for the postseason. Beginning the 2015-16 season, Murphy’s second with the team, she took SHP to four straight CCS championship games, winning a pair of CCS Division IV titles in 2016 and 2018, while compiling a CCS record of 11-3. She was also 5-4 in four Nor Cal appearances, twice reaching the semifinals.
Murphy finishes her SHP tenure with an overall record of 84-57.  

 
 Melanie                                                                                                               Markisha
 
 
 
 
 


Kayla Pedersen - June Wedding

Kayla Pedersen, June Wedding

How We Met

"You guys should meet. You're both tall." So we did. As soon as introductions finished, our friends seemingly vanished, leaving us to awkward conversation. Though neither of us knew what could happen between an engineer and a professional athlete, Nathan got some digits and asked Kayla out for coffee. After just a few short weeks, we made our relationship official while attending a Christian music festival together.

The Engagement
Kayla went to Australia to play in her last professional basketball season while Nathan stayed to work in Phoenix. Over letters and video dates, our love and friendship grew stronger. Nathan came to the Land Down Under to visit Kayla for a few weeks in November. He surprised Kayla by having a few of his buddies visit and join in on a road trip down the Great Ocean Road. Day One of the trip was met with a sandstorm on the beach, a power outage, and a thunderstorm. Not the most romantic day for a surprise proposal. Day Two presented Nathan with a beautiful setting to get down on one knee. We climbed to the top of Cape Otway Lighthouse and with the wind blowing at hurricane force, Nathan held onto the ring and asked Kayla to marry him. She said yes! We climbed down the tower and had some time of prayer together before joining our friends for some more adventure!
 
What Now?
Now that Nathan and Kayla are both in Phoenix for the foreseeable future, the wedding planning has begun. We can’t wait to get married!
With Christ as our foundation, we can't wait to do life as 'one' and celebrate this union with our family and friends.
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Kayla and Nathan will be getting married June 1st in Granby, Co. Congratulations to them!



Azella Perryman 05' Fear - Find your "Happy"

Fear will only get you so far...…….
Azella Perryman,  Caviar National Catering Operations Lead at Square

So…I’ll be the first to admit – I’ve spent the majority of my life living in fear. Fear that I won’t succeed. Fear that I WILL succeed and then people will expect that of me all the time. Fear that I wouldn’t live up to expectations. Fear that at some point people would realize I’m winging it. Fear that I’ll disappoint the people who believe in me….And that fear has driven me to do some pretty great things, get into pretty great schools and companies. A healthy dose of fear is what helps us survive, so I’m not advocating for it to be banished completely.
But at some point, in the last couple of years,  I started to realize that I was climbing the proverbial ladder to some distant nebulous goal of ‘success’.  I hadn’t really defined myself. Despite my ‘accomplishments’ (the names on my resume, the schools I’d gone to, the companies I’d worked at – all the things that generally people would point to and say I’d ‘succeeded” in life), I wasn’t really striving towards MY version of happy. And then I realized I had no idea what actually made me happy. So I started wondering what exactly was driving me to choose the jobs, relationships, and lifestyle that I was pushing myself towards.
The more I read, talked to people, (even went on a silent meditation retreat to find that inner voice)…the more I realized that the decisions I was making weren’t based on the biggest, best, possible future I could imagine…it was me subconsciously running from some terrible yet-to-occur possible future where I was socially shunned, broke and a complete failure. Or, it was me being paralyzed by the idea that I’d been given so much that if I didn’t do something GREAT and worthy of all of these blessings (i.e. you got into HBS – you HAVE to go run some Fortune 500 company or start a non-profit to help a million people or else you should have let someone else who wanted to be a game-changer have that spot!), I’d be wasting my life.
Which, lets be honest – isn’t cute. It’s not very ‘game-changer’-ish to admit to yourself that you’re not living on purpose…you’re just scared of messing up.I took pretty drastic measures to try and figure out my happy – I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that for everyone. But what I would say is it’s probably not a bad idea for anyone considering Bschool…or who’s finished Bschool and are on that ‘real life career path’ now to stop for a minute and question your own motives.
Fear is healthy to a certain point. But Fear will only get you so far. And then…you kind of have to say F it and start listening to that little voice inside that was there all along that you’ve been ignoring that’s been trying to tell you to go left when the rest of the world is telling you everyone is going right and that you should follow the crowd because it’s safe over there.
I think us MBA-types sometimes lose respect for our intuition. We over-rationalize our way into the roles that “make sense”. But sense is usually based on the life we THINK we’re SUPPOSED to lead, not on the life that would allow us to be the biggest version of ourselves. I’m not saying quit your job tomorrow because it doesn’t wake you up jumping out of bed for joy every morning. And I’m not saying don’t apply to the highest-ranked most prestigious b-school you can because you know they don’t have a major in what you want to do for your life purpose.
There are choices we make because we have responsibilities in life and the need to pay the bills is real. But. Some of the happiest people I know are happy because they took the plunge, got real about what THEIR happy looks like, despite what the “successful MBA life” looks like, and found a way to handle responsibilities their own way.
Close your eyes and rebel against your everyday version of success. Think about what decisions you’d make (what school you’d apply to, what job you’d take, what relationships you’d choose) if you weren’t afraid, if you were focused on YOUR version of happy. Think about what YOUR happy really is. Who knows. You might surprise yourself.
 

    

Jillian Harmon - chats with fans, wins Italian Cup, has birthday

In the video above Jillian answers questions from a few fans (Jillian speaks English, fans Italian subtitled)

Jillian's Ragusa  team won the Italian Basketball Cup, an annual professional competition during the A1 League season. Passalacqua Ragusa outscored Allianz Geas S.S.Giovanni 77-61 to win 2018/19 Cup title. They dominated the whole game starting with a 22-14 lead. Ragusa reached 40-25 advantage at the halftime and had 13-point difference with 10 minutes to go. Dearica Hamby (190-F-93, college: Wake Forest, agency: LBM Management) was named MVP of the game as she nailed 26 points. Jillian Harmon (185-PF-87, college: Stanford, agency: LBM Management) scored 15 and Chiara Consolini (186-F-88) added 13. Brooque Williams responded with 13 points in the losing effort. Giuditta Nicolodi (185-F/C-95, agency: SPORTlab Agency) netted 11, Kalis Loyd (188-G-89, college: Lamar, agency: ProDep Management) posted 10 and Sophie Brunner (185-F-95, college: Arizona St.) ended up with 9.

 

Had a Birthday this month!                                                                Jillian decided to run a triathalon
                                                                                                            this past summer

 

Weekend Plans With WNBAer/ESPN Analyst Chiney Ogwumike

CHINEY OGWUMIKE is a woman of many hats, balancing the roles of a WNBA Connecticut Sun Forward, WNBPA VP and a full-time analyst for ESPN, all at just 26 years old. While some players may use their off days during the season to rest and recover, Ogwumike’s starts hers with an hour commute to ESPN’s Bristol campus at 3:30am ET. “I only live my life according to 24 hours, that’s what helps me keep everything straight. It's a challenge, but it's one of those things that I take the same mindset to being an athlete and being prepared and giving it my all.” Ogwumike found time in her busy schedule to talk to THE DAILY about what was on her docket for the NBA All-Star Weekend. 

BIG WEEKEND: Friday morning is the NBA Tech Summit. Then we have the celebrity game, which I’m very excited about, and that's pretty much my ESPN hat, being an analyst for the celebrity game. Saturday morning, I have a Bleacher Report panel that I'm doing in honor of Black History Month. After that, I’m going to the NBA Africa luncheon. I've been on a lot of trips with NBA Africa; I've been to Rwanda with them, Kenya and Nigeria. Then, I will attend the Saturday night festivities with all the fun All-Star competitions. I'm going to use it as a networking opportunity. Then on Sunday, I’m actually not even able to stay for the game. I fly out first thing in the morning at 6:00am and I'm working in the studio as the women's college basketball host with games at 1:00, 3:00 and 5:00. Then at 7:00, when the All-Star Game is, we'll be having our ESPN NBA radio show, and I'll be hosting that.

BALANCING ACT: I'm pretty lucky because both careers happened when I was in Connecticut, playing for the Connecticut Sun and also working for ESPN. I guess you could say it's convenient for me to do both. But I'm not gonna lie: It's a grind and it's really hard. During the WNBA season, I'm with my team and then on my days off, instead of resting, I’ll drive to ESPN and go and be on their shows, covering the NBA, the latest news, all that stuff. They've really allowed me to share my voice, which I'm excited about. I'm so glad that they chose to invest in me, because it's a gamble in a way. I know I'm credible because I know what I bring to the table, but a lot of people question women's roles in sports. Those are stereotypes that I'm really excited to help break down. I just feel blessed and fortunate, which is why I'm trying to grind so hard to show them that, 'Hey, your investment in me is worth it.'

GLOBETROTTER: If I have time, the first thing I did when the season was over was I went back to Nigeria to reconnect with my family. And then I even went to South Africa for my cousin's wedding, hung out in Cape Town for a little bit. If I have weeks on hand or if I need to decompress for real, I love to travel. I'm already trying to plan for next time. I have African heritage, so I try to sort of explore that area. I'm thinking about going to Ghana, but the more I think about it I'm actually going to try to go to Zanzibar, which is probably one of the most beautiful places on earth.