As the fall sports season comes to a close and the winter season approaches, you might find yourself wondering who this year’s superstars will be. Who will lead their teams to victory? Who will be featured in the sports section of The Tartan, or on the CMU Athletics homepage? For the varsity women’s basketball team, you can bet Jacquie Shaw’s name will appear more than once.
Jacquie was one of two women’s basketball players elected team captain for the 2013-2014 season. She began her basketball career at Carnegie Mellon as a freshman, but she’s been an avid player since 4th grade. She is now a senior and plays as a guard for CMU’s team. For the past two months, Jacquie and the women’s basketball team have been gearing up for another stellar season, attending open gym workouts on Mondays and Saturdays and weight lifting sessions on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays with Strength and Conditioning director Alan DeGennaro.
“Open gym is nice,” Jacquie explains, “because you don’t have anyone there telling you what to do.” Workouts are about to get a lot more intense, however, as formal practices just began this Tuesday. As Jacquie and the girls officially start their season, they get to look forward to intense two-hour practices six days a week, lifting two times per week and film sessions after every game.
“We have a small freshman class this year, so it won’t be hard for them to get into the system,” says Jacquie. Despite the tough practices ahead, she has high hopes for the team this year. “Last year we made ECAC playoffs for the first time,” says Jacquie, “so hopefully this year we’ll make NCAA playoffs.”
Outside of basketball, Jacquie is a senior Mechanical Engineering major. She also does volunteer work with the Mechanical Engineering Department on campus. In her free time, she enjoys spray painting and watching shows on Netflix, especially Sherlock and Firefly.
As Jacquie and her co-captain, sophomore Liza Otto, get their team whipped into shape for the new season, we’ll be anticipating their first home game on November 15th against Geneva. With a new batch of freshmen and an excellent captain like Jacquie, there doesn’t seem to be anything this team can’t accomplish.