Raychele Parker is a UEL student-athlete who is a part of the Women’s Basketball team, competing in the BUCS South Eastern 1A league where they are in first place at 8-0.
Raychele is in her fourth year with the team with a versatile skill set being able to play different positions when required: “I can play guard or the post position, it depends who’s on the court.”
Being able to play front and backcourt positions is very valuable for a team as it increases the number of line-up possibilities, providing an ability to match up with teams using either big or small line-ups.
Parker gave an insight as to what it is like playing for the team, explaining how things have improved in recent years. “We have more freedom this year with finances.” And the team seems to have found a good fit with their new coach Tope.
New Coach
In Tope’s first year with the team they went undefeated in the league at 10-0 to win the division and gain promotion. Parker gave an insight on how it felt to achieve this.
“It was great, throughout my early basketball career I was losing every game, then as I got older I moved to a better team and experienced winning. As I got into university, things looked brighter and on my third year we went undefeated, the tables had turned for my basketball experiences.”
The team has continued their momentum of that impressive season as they have yet to lose a game this year taking their league record to 18-0 over the last two seasons.
The fourth-year guard understands that the team cannot get complacent if they want to see the same kind of success this season. “We have to listen and learn, work hard and work on fitness.”
It is not only the skills and physical training that allows a team to be successful as Raychele attributes a lot of the team’s success to the team’s camaraderie: “We need to make sure we bond, what allowed us to be so successful last year was that we were like family.” Chemistry is certainly a proven cause for success in team sport especially in basketball where communication is key.
Home field Advantage
Raychele explained how home games can help relating how she feels about playing at the Sports Dock: “It feels like I’m home, I’ve been here so long its comfortable.” It has been proven that some players play better on a familiar court and having support and encouragement from a home crowd always energises players.
The away games seemed to have caused some issues in terms of timings and transport as Parker said: “Travelling away is tedious especially this year as the away games have been starting really late (8pm) and when the team is in London we have to travel to the venue ourselves which isn’t good because we get back home around 12am.”
Teams often prefer an earlier tip-off time especially when travel back and forth is required, and there has been criticism that some games seem to have been poorly organised at times in the league: “Away games simply shouldn’t be later than 4 or 5pm,” Raychele stated.
Even though university sport is about developing skills to the highest level and competing to win it does offer more than that. Raychele explained what else she loves to play for: “You get to meet new people, it fits around my schedule and can take the stress off University and work.”
