The University of Mississippi Athletics
Elite Eight Flashback: Keeping Them Healthy
12/7/2016 | Women's Basketball
Keeping Them Healthy: Heather Landry Shirleyby Jessica Poole, Athletic Communications
The 2016-17 season is the 10th Anniversary of the Ole Miss women's basketball team's run to the Elite Eight in 2007 and throughout this season OleMissSports.com will flashback to some of the people that made that run possible.
Aside from coaches and players one might say the athletic trainer is the most important member of a basketball team. The athletic trainer is the person in charge of keeping everyone healthy and on the court. Heather Landry Shirley was in charge of keeping the Rebels healthy during the 2006-07 Elite Eight run.
Shirley, assistant athletics director of health and sports performance, recalls that season with good memories.
"That class of upperclassmen were a very special class," said Shirley. "Having watched them all four years grow into the players and individuals that they became their senior year, I really felt like `this is the class that is going to go far.' It did seem special as if there was something in the air. You could sense that the players were hungry for it and it was a just a little different attitude towards the start of the year."
One thing that stuck out for Shirley during that postseason run was the mindset that the team had throughout.
"Once we got rolling in the postseason you could see the difference in the competitiveness and hunger that they had," said Shirley. "They really worked together with each game and every win made them that much more hungry for another one. The upperclassmen did a really good job of rallying and getting the underclassmen fired up about the possibility of what could happen. Just their belief in themselves made them go so far, aside from their physical ability. That whole mindset that they carried with them that whole year is really what made them so successful."
In her profession Shirley deals with a lot of maintenance of players along with the bumps and bruises that occur throughout the season, as well as helping with recovery from game to game. Shirley acknowledged that as that season progressed, she had the challenge of `what can I do to make sure they are at their peak for this postseason run.'
"Anytime you go to the postseason you have that challenge of `what more can I do to help step up my game to help the players," said Shirley. "You spend all year with them doing maintenance and recovery things, just trying to keep them healthy in general, but you get to a point where you know that they have gone further and exhausted their bodies to a whole new level, so it was about finding ways to help them make it through and help them stay healthy in that sense."
Shirley had her regular routine with many of the players and she continued to do those routine massages and resorted to cold tubs in hotel rooms as postseason sometimes necessitates that you get creative. She also continued to stress hydration, which was necessary in some of the gyms they played in during that run.
One gym that comes to mind was Dayton's gym during the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight games. Shirley recalls that gym was very warm which the team wasn't expecting at all. Hydration is one of the most important things for athletes to maintain peak performance and Shirley went old school with pickles for some of her upperclassmen that year.
"I had a couple of the upperclassmen that loved pickles and we used pickles a lot that year," said Shirley. "I know it's a little old school, but it got the job done. So we stuck with what was working. Pickles with Gator-Lites and Gatorade and all of that combined to give them a little extra. It was also something fun that they could look back and joke about from that season."
Shirley had a front row seat for the Elite Eight run and even had a funny story -- well funny looking back on it 10 years later -- to tell from the Maryland game.
"It was an intense game and our point guard Ashley Awkward came out of the game and walked straight over to me. I had no clue what was wrong and Coach (Carol) Ross just started in on me, `We need her back on the court Heather, what's wrong with her, etc.' It turned out Ashley had just lost her contact lens and we got her right back out, but it was definitely one of the more intense moments of that postseason run for me."
As someone who saw that team grow for four years, Shirley remembers her favorite game from that postseason run.
"My favorite win was against Maryland because that was when we knew, it was like `Oh my gosh, we just beat Maryland, and we can really do this.' To me, that was one of the more exciting ones. Just being on the court with them and feeling that tension that had you on the edge of your seat the whole time. I think I'll always remember that game."
Shirley doesn't work with women's basketball anymore, as she's in charge of the health of the Ole Miss volleyball team, but she does look back at that improbable run to the 2007 Elite Eight with very fond memories.
