This past weekend, I had the pleasure of traveling to Riga, Latvia as the guest of the United States Embassy. I went on behalf of the WNBA in order to participate in a breast health awareness event. This is an important league-wide initiative of the WNBA and we wanted to impart it’s importance by showing our support.

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The first day was a full day. I started my morning waking up at 4:30am and the sun was beaming. The sun hadn't set until 10:30p the night before, so I was under the impression the sun didn't set at all because I fell asleep before it did. Imagine my confusion with the time of day, I was already jet-lagged from a ten hour time difference along with a hectic travel schedule. I was rerouted due to a four hour delay in my first flight to Washington Dulles. Instead I flew from LAX to San Francisco to Frankfurt to Riga. Luckily I was able to snag an exit seat on each flight. I was delayed, however, several hours in Frankfurt due to missing the flight to Riga because of the original rerouting. It wasn't so bad though because the Frankfurt airport provides lounge chairs for fatigued passengers and those with long layovers. It's a major layover spot for people traveling in Europe. I read my book, Cross by James Patterson. I felt like such an old fogy with my real live paperback because everyone I saw had either a kindle, iPad or some other gadgetry to help them accomplish what I was doing the old-fashioned way. I have an iPad, and I read several books on it, yet this was one of the books in my archives that Rock, my fiancé had read, that I didn't get a chance to read yet, and I didn't want to waste money buying the electronic version of a book I already owned. I used to be a die-hard James Patterson fan, but I have been sidetracked with discovering other suspense/thriller authors as of late. I'm happy I found my way back home though. I missed his protagonist, Alex Cross, a black psychologist who works for the FBI and is a widowed single father. In the movie rendition of his book Along Came a Spider, Morgan Freeman was cast in the role. I thought it was fitting.

Courage, sacrifice, determination, commitment, toughness, heart, talent, guts. That's what little girls are made of; the heck with sugar and spice.” ~ Bethany Hamilton
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For all of my loyal blog readers, I know there’s been a long delay since my last blog post, trust me, however, I haven’t been loafing around. Actually, I’ve been quite busy. It’s what I like to call being ‘in the lab’. I’m concocting a special formula. More than one formula, really. Firstly, as team captain, I’m working to further develop our team chemistry, so that my team, Mersin Buyuksehir Bld. can win this Turkish Championship (last year we came close by finishing in 2nd place). Secondly, I’m developing my own game, or maybe I should say transforming it. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been coached, played and developed as a center. I could step out and take bigger posts to the basket as a smaller, quicker 5, but I was known for my inside game. Now, the players are even bigger, the game is changing, and in order for me to maintain my place in the sport I love, I need to transform into a more perimeter playing post. And finally, I’m organizing my plan of attack with my other entrepreneurial endeavors.

I’m also on borrowed time as my fiancé is leaving to play arena football in a few weeks, so I’m trying to savor every moment we have left with him. Once he’s gone, it’s just me and Bre against the world, and I’ll really have my hands full. I tend to be more creative when Rock is gone though, because I think being productive helps the time apart pass more quickly.

Now that BreAzia, my daughter has started hooping, my schedule is really full, so all of you Olympia TV viewers, please bear with me as I figure out a new time to broadcast. The time change also contributes to the dilemma, but I’m sure I’ll figure out something soon.

I’ll get into more details with what I’m doing on and off the court in a future post. For now, I just wanted all of you to know, that I haven’t forgotten about you, I’ve just been ‘in the lab’. Until next time…

Over the weekend I read an article titled: "Five Reasons to Believe Women Will Play in the NBA". While the WNBA has struggled to receive national notoriety, respect and fan support, I will admit it is somewhat encouraging to hear NBA commissioner David Stern give women's basketball players respect saying, "sure, I think that's well within the range of probability," regarding women playing in the NBA. Even Dirk Nowitski weighed-in on the subject stating, "Skills-wise, yeah, but physical-wise, it's tough…" At the same token, however, it baffles me that women's basketball players must constantly be compared to men, the WNBA compared to the NBA. It's almost as if we must be able to compete with the men in order to be validated as professional athletes.

I suppose I take issue with this because in no other sport are women constantly compared to their male counterparts. Allison Felix isn't invalidated because she isn't as fast as Usain Bolt. Serena Williams isn't constantly being compared to Roger Federer. Beach volleyball player Misty May-Treanor isn't encouraged to go against Phil Dalhausser in order to see if she's really got the goods. Only in basketball are we constantly compared to men. My question is why? Why can't we just be who we are, the best women's basketball players in the world? 

Our history of playing basketball is as old as the history of basketball itself, and yet, we've had a rocky road claiming our place in the sports landscape. Here's a truncated version of our journey.

And the celebration continues. The President’s Cup was indeed a great accomplishment, and since we won in Ankara, Turkey and not in Mersin, we had a pre-game trophy presentation for the fans and city of Mersin to enjoy. We turned down the lights, dropped confetti and ran in as we were individually announced and given flowers. The fans were amazing and we shared the trophy with them by parading it around the arena for them to touch.

After all of the hoopla, it was time for us to play our first regular season game. We won 78-58 vs. Kocaeli, an Istanbul team that just moved into the 1st Division this season. For game stats click  here.