The coach of the women’s basketball team at the University of Iowa says all her players want “to be good role models.”
A suspended Iowa football player was picked up last night in Des Moines on marijuana possession charges. Runningback Adam Robinson is the second Hawkeye football star to be arrested on drug charges this month. During an afternoon news conference in Iowa City, Hawkeye women’s basketball coach Lisa Bluder was asked by a reporter how often she talks with her team about making the “right” decisions.
“It’s not just because of what’s happened in the news with the football team that we talk about those things. We honestly talk about those things all the time with our team,” Bluder said in reply. “It’s a general expectation of the team. Our first team meeting in the fall we begin with what our expectations are for our team and our values for our team are listed in our locker room and they see them every single day when they walk in. We’ve even given them a quiz on, ‘What are the values of our team?'”
Bluder is a native of Marion, Iowa, who spent 10 seasons coaching the Drake women before taking over as head coach of the Iowa women’s basketball team in April of 2000. Bluder often calls her team an “extension of her family” and according to Bluder’s on-line biography, she considers herself a “disciplinarian” who doesn’t have “a lot of rules” but instead has “a lot of expectations” for her players.
“It’s not like, ‘Put the fire out when something bad happens.’ I think you’ve got to keep the grass wet all the time with that. You’ve got to be able to stop any fire before it happens,” Bluder said during this afternoon’s news conference. “I fell like that’s something that our team really understands and I’m fortunate that they really buy in. Our team really wants to be good role models. They want to have the respect of the other people in our community because they are good people — and they genuinely are.”
Bluder played basketball for the University of Northern Iowa. She began her coaching career at St. Ambrose University in Davenport.