By MAYAN PAZ Photos by DANIELA SALINAS
Tiger Media Network
Individual awards are often secondary in a team sport. However, opening the season with a 4-0 team record and winning the first MIAA Player of the Week Award is a pretty good combination.
Olivia Hollenbeck, a 6-foot-3-inch graduate student from Lincoln, Neb., has been a star for the Fort Hays State Women’s basketball team in the first two weeks of the season. After posting 29 and 19 points in the first two games last weekend, Hollenbeck was awarded the first MIAA Player of the Week Award of the season.
Hollenbeck continued to impress during this weekend’s games against Adams State and MSU Denver, notching 12 points and six rebounds against the Grizzlies and adding 14 points, six rebounds and four steals against the Roadrunners. She is averaging 18.5 points, 6.3 rebounds, and 2.5 steals per game for the first four games of the season.
Hollenbeck said this award is a great confidence booster but gave credit to her team for allowing her to stand out.
“I think it says a lot about my team, more than myself, and how hard we’ve worked this preseason,” she said. “I think we put a lot of time into it. Our practice has been very high-energy, and we’ve just had building every single week. Obviously, it’s an individual award, but it goes to show how locked our team has been since day one of preseason.”
Hollenbeck’s performance is something FHSU Head Coach Talia Kahrs is pleased with, and she expressed her appreciation for Hollenbeck and the award.
“I think those (awards) are a nice little added bonus. I appreciate that the coaches recognize just the effort she put in last week, and I think it’s something that, personally, they’re all (the players) probably trying to achieve at some point or another,” Kahrs said. “She did a great job last week at getting a bunch of really good shots of what she created for herself and got herself open, and we were able to get her the ball, and she finished it.”
The fifth-year player is the target player for plenty of the plays for FHSU’s offense, and her teammates are happy to recognize her as a leading contributor to the team.
“This is our third year playing together, and her fifth year, so I feel like every day in practice, we’re always getting better, and it’s starting to show on the floor too,” junior point guard Brooke Loewe said. “We all kind of specifically know where each other is going, and Olivia always knows where the balls are and where she needs to be sealed, and where she can be to get the pass and score.”
Kahrs also mentioned the importance of Hollenbeck as a target underneath the basket.
“My goal is always to get the closest shot we can to the basket. And obviously, Olivia is down there a lot, and so we are running stuff for her a lot,” she said.
Hollenbeck does not dismiss her role on the team, and she is proud to be one of the team’s leaders at both ends of the floor.
“It’s definitely something that I just kind of built throughout my career. You just get more and more responsibility as you get older, I think, and it’s something I don’t take lightly and I hope that I can always be a scorer for my team and help them in that way,” she said. “But being that person on defense, too, is also important to me. I don’t want just to be someone who is relied on as a scorer but also on the defense and just showing up on both sides.”
As the team stands unbeaten with four wins under their belt, they will now have ten days off before hosting Tabor College on November 26.
“I’m very proud of us,” Hollenbeck said. “We’ve really worked hard this preseason. I think we’ve been just building every single week. I think that’s what we need to continue to do.”
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