Tuesday, March 8, 2016 – International Women’s Day and the Women’s Basketball Division I Tournament.

Tuesday, March 8, 2016 – International Women’s Day and the Women’s Basketball Division I Tournament.

Today is International Women’s Day. We celebrate and sing “I am woman; hear me roar in numbers too big to ignore.” (Helen Reddy).

First female leader of the Texas Aggie Corp of Cadets. photo by me.

What better way to celebrate than to watch amazing young women play collegiate basketball at the highest level.

# 1 Courtney Willis – Senior – Texas A&M; Major: Computer Science; 3.8 GPA with Khaalia Hillsman- Texas A&M “Big” – sophomore business major who is already taking graduate courses in TAMU’s school of business. Photo by me.

The teams for the 2016 NCAA women’s basketball tournament will be selected next Monday. Sixty-four teams will be selected to play in this tournament. In April one team will be crowned National Champions and will cut down the nets as confetti streams to the court.

Whether you are a fan of basketball or not, take a time out to watch some incredibly gifted and talented woman play basketball. Listen to a few of the amazing stories of the leaders of tomorrow who are currently dribbling a basketball upon and down a court.

Here are some examples of the stories you will hear about these women and the many others like them who will be the decision-makers for our future. I mixed many examples, but each one of them represents real stories and examples of the female student athletes.

The women’s broadcast teams are pretty awesome too. If you tune in to a game, you will hear another group of incredible women who played and or coached the game. Here are some examples of the comments you might hear.

Sally is a 6’ 7” Senior and hails from French Lick, Indiana where she was four-year all state and twice McDonalds All-American. She graduated from high school with over 30 hours of college credit. She graduated in December with a degree in nuclear physics and is working on her Masters in molecular biology. She has been accepted by Johns Hopkins Medical School and will enter this fall. She said she grew up listening to her grandfather tell stories about watching Larry Bird play in high school and college.

Princess is a 5’9” sophomore aerospace engineering major, with a minor in Russian. She was a National Merit Scholar and completed an internship with NASA last summer. She helped design a soft landing system for the Mars study. Her brother is a two-time All-American basketball player at Duke.

Natasha’s is a six-foot small forward. She and her parents escaped some horrible place in the world and came to the United States when Natasha was ten. She spoke no English and found that basketball, like all sports, has no language barriers and soon began playing street ball in some horrible place in inner city Chicago. When she was twelve she got involved with the Dawn Staley Foundation. She credits this experience as life-saving. When Coach Staley offered her a scholarship, there was no hesitation. She was coming to South Carolina to play for her idol and mentor.

The starting five for Princeton refer to Otisha as Miss B. She is the only one who made a B last semester. She made a B in folk dance giving her a 3.9 GPA while the other four all boasted a 4.0 GPA for last semester. Otisha is majoring in environmental design and international women’s studies. She wants to help bring clean drinking water to remote villages throughout the world.

Carla is a junior point guard from Atlanta. Carla’s team mates refer to her as “Lashes” because of her long eye lashes. Carla credits her success to her high school AVID program and her middle school teacher, Karen Young. Carla has a double major in Sports Managements and Communications. Her goals include attending law school and one day becoming president of ESPN.

In honor of women throughout the world today and for those making the tomorrows let’s get ready to Celebrate, celebrate; Dance to the music. I am woman; hear me roar in numbers too big to ignore …