Player Journal: Shantrell Sneed

Senior forward Shantrell Sneed has been writing a blog for CalBears.com throughout the 2008-09 season. If you’d like to see all of Trell’s blog entries, you can find her blog on CalBears.com by clicking here. Below is an entry that was posted earlier today.

Since I never touched upon this earlier in my blog, I’d like to take this chance to tell you what senior day was like for me. I knew that I was going to be announced first out of the three seniors, but it came a little sooner than I had expected. I didn’t have a lot of time to compose myself. I had told myself that I wasn’t going to cry, but as soon as I looked up at my mom, who was bawling, my tears started coming down. Those are the type of moments that you look forward to as a freshman. You always know that your time is going to come but you can never prepare yourself for what it’s going to feel like when you walk out on the court and you realize that it is really going to be your last game on that floor. There were so many emotions going through me that day. I was just glad that I got the opportunity to play in front of our home crowd for four years and especially on senior day. It was great that our friends, family and fans came out to support us on our last game.

Although our finishes at the end of the regular season and the Pac-10 Tournament were disappointing, we get to play again in the NCAA Tournament. But, from here on out, it’s one and done. There are no more guarantees. Coach says that we have to earn every game from here on out. That’s the type of thought that motivated me. There are no games tomorrow unless we earn it. We don’t get to practice again unless we take care of business.

On Selection Monday, we kind of knew what was going to happen. Our coaches had told us ahead of time that we were either going to get a four or five seed, so it wasn’t much of a surprise. We were nervous about who were going to play. We have some familiarity with Fresno State after playing them last year. We were all happy with the seed that we got and our first-round opponent. We just need to take care of business now.

Last year, we got the opportunity to play down at Stanford and this year, we’re at the Galen Center. It feels like we’ve been playing here for the past two weeks so it feels like a home-court advantage, even though Fresno State is a little bit closer to L.A. than we are in Berkeley. We’re going to have a great fan base to come our and support us. We know the gyms, we know the locker rooms, we know the rims so we feel like we’re at home a little bit. With this being my fourth trip to the NCAA Tournament, I now know the type of dedication and focus that it takes to stay in the tournament. As a senior, this is my last tournament so I want to make that push so that we can go as far as we can and hopefully make it to Saint Louis for the Final Four.

Go Bears
~Shantrell Sneed