Team keeps busy with classes, skills work, conditioning

The four freshmen (from left) guard Hannah Jump, forward Fran Belibi, guard Haley Jones, forward Ashten Prechtel 

All 15 Stanford women’s basketball players arrived on campus in late June for summer classes as well as preparations for the upcoming season.

Of course much of the fans’ excitement focuses on the freshmen: forwards Fran Belibi and Ashten Prechtel along with guards Haley Jones and Hannah Jump.

“They’re doing awesome,” associate head coach Kate Paye said in a recent telephone interview. They get along well. “They’re very mature.”

International competition for Fran, Kiana, Alyssa

Besides taking classes, Fran is on the USA Women’s U19 World Cup Team that plays July 20-28 in Bangkok, Thailand.

Kiana Williams

Alyssa Jerome

Two of her junior class teammates, guard Kiana Williams and forward Alyssa Jerome, will compete in the 2019 Pan American Games in Lima, Peru, Aug. 6-10. They won’t be teammates, though. Kiana will play for the USA, while Alyssa will play for her home country of Canada.

Four other players – sophomore forwards Lacie Hull and Lexie Hull, junior forward Estella Moschkau and senior guard Anna Wilson – represented Stanford in the 2019 USA Basketball Women’s 3x3 national championships in Las Vegas in April. Coached by assistant coach Lindy La Rocque, they finished with 5-1 record.

New sports performance coach

While on campus, the players work on basketball skills with the coaches for four hours a week and with new sports performance coach Ali Kershner four hours a week.

Ali, who also works with the women’s golf team, comes to Stanford after four years at the University of Kansas. She graduated from Duke University in 2015 with a degree in evolutionary anthropology and went on to earn her master’s degree in exercise physiology from Kansas and then to work there.

A graduate of Palo Alto High School, she succeeds Brittany Keil, who went to Notre Dame.

Lexie, Lacie, Jenna, Mikaela have internships

While classes and basketball take up much of their time, four players also have internships.

Lexie Hull

Lexie is working in sales and development for HomeCourt in San Jose. 

A product of NEX Team Inc., a mobile artificial intelligence company, “HomeCourt is a revolutionary AI basketball training app that helps you get better faster. Train with real-time shot tracking, interactive drills with instant feedback …,” its website says. 

Lacie Hull

Her twin, Lacie, is doing electric vehicle research for Stanford’s Department of Management Science and

Engineering. “The department’s mission is, through education and research, to advance the design, management, operation and interaction of technological, economic and social systems,” its website says.

Sophomore guard Jenna Brown is doing research for the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford. 

Jenna Brown

“The center supports research, teaching and reporting about western land and life in the United States, Canada and Mexico,” its website says.

Mikaela Brewer

Finally, senior guard Mikaela Brewer is an assistant in Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab. Its mission “is to understand the dynamics and implications of interactions among people in immersive virtual reality simulations and other forms of human digital representation in media, communications systems and games,” its website says.

Team gets VR demonstration

Along those technical lines, the team recently visited Facebook Technologies for a career development seminar and demonstration of its Oculus virtual reality. Oculus “specializes in virtual reality hardware and software products,” its website says.

The team gets a demonstration of VR at Facebook's Oculus.

The technology was developed at the lab where Mikaela is working, and the visit was organized by Jenna, Kate said.

Meanwhile, two seniors, forward Nadia Fingall and guard DiJonai Carrington, are rehabbing from knee surgeries. Kate hopes both of them will be ready to go when the season starts in November.

Team to play USF in Warriors’ new home

An early highlight of the season will be the team’s Nov. 9 game against the University of San Francisco at the Golden State Warriors’ new Chase Center in San Francisco. That will be “a lot of fun,” Kate said.

Also something to look forward to is that “we’ve seen much improvement from our returners,” Kate said. “That’s really exciting for us.”

Then there’s the possibility of Fran’s dunking. She has become something of a social media sensation with her dunks. Recently, the SWBB Twitter account showed her vaulting over two girls and dunking at a Stanford girls basketball camp.

Will she dunk in Stanford games? “She certainly likes to dunk,” Kate said.

Overall, “we’re having a great summer,” she said.

Photos by Stanford Athletics