Women's Team

[GoZips]

I am impressed by Coach Jody Kest's no nonsense approach to her first practice. Sheworked the Lady Zips hard. While a bit short on running drills the pace was quick andsoon revealed the few players who were not physically up to snuff. Lindsey West isterribly out of shape. Her size is vital to a successful season.Looked to me that nearly all of the returning players spent considerable time in the weight room. This no group of wilting lilies. With Coach Kest's aggressive in your facestyle of play, physical strength plays an important role. Seems that most of the playerstook to heart her preconditioning program.Impressive, too, was a station system where the players broke down in groups and allthe coaches worked with the players on skill sets. There seemed to be a lot ofemphasis on an aggressive defense style. As fans I think you will enjoy watching theladies get after their opponents.One drill that really interested me was dribbling between folding chairs. Five chairswere placed on the floor in a pattern to route the player out from the baseline to thetop of the key and back to the basket. The objective was to dribble between thestations (chairs) switching ball hand at each station and finish with a lay-up.At first the players handled the drill with ease. As the tempo was gradually increasedand fatigue set in miscues became the norm. I think if this drill is repeated oftenthrough out the season the benefits will show up in the quality of play. It seems to be an excellent drill.Do not expect miracles. Expect a continual improvement in quality of play as the seasonprogresses. Expect these Lady Zips to not finish last in the conference. Expect the LadyZips to pull of at least two quality "upsets".

[ZachTheZip]

Up is the only way to go after last season. Mabye we can at least make other teams worry about playing us for once.

[UA Fan]

Thanks for the reports on the opening practice. If we see that in-your-face defensive effort then good things will happen for the Lady Zips. It would be a great milestone for the department to have all of our teams out of the cellar. With any amount of success, Kest will soon be at Cincinnati. OK...not funny.

[zipboy]

Another nice post GoZips. I saw the last half hour of practice. A few additional thoughts.1. I liked how Kest ran practice. She did a lot of teaching, not much yelling, but was pretty intense. 2. Rianna Miller jumped out as being a bigtime player. She moves very well and looked good out there.3. Besides Miller, Laura Stephenson impressed me a lot. 4. My favorite drill, 2 on 2 in the paint, no dribbling or passing or fouls, got to rebound and put the ball in the hole. They beat the crap out of each other in this game. I hope to see some strong finishes to the basket after watching that drill.5. For the first time ever, I am actually excited about Akron women's bball.

[zippyrifle32]

they might not have run much in practice, but they had some god-awful conditioning preseason.