Young WolfPack women’s basketball team ready for a first taste of playoff action

First was Brett, from 2010 to 2015. Then came Mike, who wrapped up his college career in 2020. This year, the torch has been passed to Megan. In her fourth year of eligibility, she is the elder stateswoman of the WolfPack women’s basketball team.

“Every day is just focusing on the little things. Focusing on those small goals because we don’t see as much on the scoresheet the results of our hard work,” Rouault explains. “It’s been super rewarding and super awesome for me to gain that leadership. Having eleven rookies on the team, learning to deal with them and help them out with everything they’re going through.”

Rouault is also the only member of the WolfPack who was around when Ken Olynyk was the athletic director for Thompson Rivers University. Olynyk came back to coach the women’s basketball team last October and inherited an extremely young basketball team, featuring 11 first-year players.

“Of those eleven freshmen, nine of them didn’t play in Grade 12 because of COVID,” Olynyk points out. “They’re really Grade 11s coming on the floor, trying to compete. With a lot of the teams we’re playing against — you know, UBC has three seniors — that’s way ahead of where we are.”

With such a young group, it’s been tough for Olynyk to convince his team they’ve improved. The WolfPack have only won two games all season, so the results aren’t obvious.

“It’s hard because they don’t necessarily see it,” Olynyk tells CFJC Sports. “The only leader we have is Megan, a fourth-year. They don’t have mentors, you know? They’re all first-years trying to find their way through first-year university, trying to find their way through the academics and everything that goes along with it. But I’m proud of them; they’ve done a really good job. We knew we were going to be in the playoffs — our goal from day one was to win this next game.”

The WolfPack’s first-round opponent in the Canada West basketball tourney is the Mount Royal Cougars, one of the teams that TRU beat early in the season.

“We’re definitely going to be familiar, and I think that’s a really important factor,” Olynyk says. “We’re familiar with the people we’re playing against, we’ve seen a couple of times — we beat them, they beat us, the games have been close. I think the team feels very positive about that.”

“We feel confident that we can beat them because we did in the pre-season,” Rouault says. “We’re expecting it to be run-and-gun, a fast game and we’re expecting to go out there and keep up with them. Hopefully, we shoot the lights out. That’s our goal.”

Tip-off time for the WolfPack on Friday (Mar. 4) is 6:00 pm in Calgary against Mount Royal.

by Adam Donnelly

Young WolfPack women’s basketball team ready for a first taste of playoff action

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