Senior Michel'le St. Pierre blogs about her experience at the NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Tournament Final Four, which is being held in Nashville, Tennesee. While at the Final Four, St. Pierre is one of 10 honorees of the Women's Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) All-State "Good Works" Team for her outstanding contributions in the community.
4/5/14 - Traveling To Nashville & Tourney Town | 4/6/14 - Dress Rehersal | 4/7/14 - National Semifinals & Meeting Beth Bass
April 8, 2014 - Signing Autographs & The National
Championship GameHowdy,
Going to Nashville, Tennessee for the Final Four was truly an experience of a lifetime and I will remember this moment of the rest of my life. I had some great memories and more importantly I’ve met and made some great friends. I want to take this time to thank everyone who has made this possible for me and has helped shaped me into the person I am today.
Today we hit up Tourney Town at 2:45 PM for an on-stage recognition for our award which was pretty awesome because we had a great crowd of all the little kids. After our on-stage recognition we headed over to the autograph session we were holding, we signed over 200 autographs, it was pretty cool. There were tons of little kids, but there were also a lot of adults who wanted our autograph and picture too.
After an hour of signing basketball, t-shirts, and cards we had down time until the championship game which was at 7:30 PM. We than headed over to the game and watched UConn and Notre Dame play, I wanted the underdog Notre Dame to win but UConn was just too good. We stayed until the end to watch UConn win the National Championship game; it was quite the experience.
Off to bed; I have an early flight in the morning.
Michel’le
Hello Everyone,
Today we started off the day with breakfast on our own, so I had an ice coffee and a bagel from Dunkins which is a thirty-second walk across the road. After a quick and short breakfast, I got ready and put on my business casual attire and we met up as a team and headed up to Beth Bass’s suite which was located on the 21st floor of the Omni Hotel.
It was absolutely breathtaking and beautiful up there, you could see everything up there and it was truly an honor to be in there. As soon as Beth Bass walked out, she quickly approached Coach Tessmer and she introduced me to her, I guess Coach and her go way back.
After that we had a short break where we changed into our travel suits and headed over to Tourney Town to give an on stage recognition to local Girl Scouts and clubs for their community involvement. After shaking all the little kids hands and taking an on stage photo, we were released for little over an hour. I got lunch with Amy her coach, and her family, we got a little taste of the local flavor in a pull pork sandwich. We than had a walk thru at the Bridgestone Arena to get prepare for our on court recognition later that night.
After the walk thru, we had the rest of the afternoon off until the game. In these few hours off I headed to a local clinic to get checked out by the doctors and found out I had a double ear infection and an infection in my throat, they quickly put me on antibiotics.
We than got to meet a former University of Tennessee player and WNBA player, Tamika and she gave us a little speech.
After watching an uneventful Maryland & Notre Dame matchup we were not only excited to see UConn and Stanford play, but we were excited to be going on court at the first media timeout in the second half.
It was an amazing feeling being called out onto the court in front of thousands of people and to have my face on the big screen.
UConn’s game wasn't as thrilling as I had hope so I left early and headed to bed.
Michel’le
Sunday, April 6, 2014 - Dress
Rehearsal
Hey, Hey, Hey,
Today was a bad day for me because I was told by an All State Representative that I was not allowed to attend the community service project that we were going to be doing today because I was sick. They did not want to chance me getting a patient sick at Vanderbilt Cancer Center getting sick or a volunteer as they were putting the patients’ health first.
At first I was really upset that I could not be a part of this because this is something I had looking forward, but then I realized that I would never want to get a child and/or patient sick. They told me I had to stay in bed and rest until the award show later on in the night. I slept in and did some homework, very boring.
After the rest of the Good Works Team got back, I talked to the team about their experience at the hospital, they stated on how good of an experience it was and how heartwarming it was. They created care packages and handed them out to various patients and heard their stories.
We had time to get ourselves all dolled up for the WBCA Award Show which started off with a reception with light refreshments where the coach’s from Notre Dame and UConn had an on stage interview. After the reception we sat thru the various awards that were given out, than we were called on stage to be given an on stage recognition. After that we all headed out separate ways, me, Coach, Meredith, and Lily went to a local Italian restaurant for dinner and now its time for bed.
Night!
Michel’le
Saturday, April 5, 2014 - Traveling To Nashville & Tourney Town
Hello,
Today was a busy, but uneventful day. I also wasn’t in the best of spirits with a head cold on Friday morning.
Assistant Coach Meredith (Galena) and I departed from Boston to Chicago at 8 AM and then quickly boarded our next flight at 10:45 AM to Nashville. There were a lot of UConn fans on the second plane along with some folks headed to the Men’s Basketball Final Four in Texas.
After being greeted by Kyle Grudis, who is our All-State main point of contact, we loaded our gear into a limo van with three other players on the Good Works Team – Alyssa Englert of the University of Hartford, Kastine Evans of the University of Kentucky and Alexa Baltes of Illinois Wesleyan.
Once we got settled in, we had the afternoon to ourselves to explore Tourney Town and I even got to watch the women’s UConn team’s open practice, which was fan-based, but definitely cool to see them play up close.
We had a meeting at 4 PM sharp with light refreshments, where we introduced ourselves and got to meet members from the All-State and Women’s Basketball Coaches Association. Once we left, Coach (Karen) Tessmer, Coach Meredith, Lily (Tessmer) and I headed to a local restaurant to watch the men’s UConn game against Florida. After that, I went to bed a little early, because I was still feeling under the weather.
I can’t wait for tomorrow! We get to meet Beth Bass, who is the CEO of the WBCA.
Michel’le
Photo Below (Top) - Michel'le St. Pierre cranks up a shot at Tourney Town's shooting contest
Photo Below (Bottom) - Coach Meredith Galena (Right) and Michel'le sit at the sports desk at Tourney Town's exhibit area
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