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Class: Sophomore Height: 5-4 Hometown: Topeka
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Last winter Emily Eagan may have been the only Cloud County Community College women’s basketball player not looking forward to playing tournament games in Salina’s Bicentennial Center.
The year before, en route to their 2001 national title, the Thunderbirds had made the Bicentennial Center their home away from home, winning seven straight games there. But as 2002 tournament time approached, Eagan remembered her own experiences there.
“O for 3,” she says as she tells of Topeka Hayden High School’s frustrating opening round losses in the Class 4A state tournament at the Bicentennial Center her sophomore, junior and senior years. According to Eagan, a sharpshooting guard, the distant backgrounds make the arena’s rims look “about dime size.”
“I hate it there,” she told CCCC coach Brett Erkenbrack, who put a nix on her negative thinking and told her, “We need you to shoot well for us.” Dime-size targets or not, Eagan arrived in Salina with her three-point shot on the money. In the three games at the Bicentennial Center she hit eight three-pointers. “It was all a mental thing, I think,” Eagan reflects.
In her freshman season, usually coming off the bench, the 5-4 Eagan finished with 63 three-pointers and averaged 7.4 points a game. “At every level of play,” Erkenbrack says, “you’ve got to have some shooters, and she’s a long-range bomber.” And that’s in any arena. —Story by www.studentprofileservices.com Fall 2002