Kasemodel put much effort into planning this retreat to take the team to another level. “The last thing I wanted to do was to take a weekend away from everyone and not get something great that we can use all season.” They left on a Friday after school to travel to Winter Park, returning Sunday afternoon.

At the start of the retreat, she asked the girls to imagine being on a bus, a common experience but not all that comfortable. “What does it smell like? What is the temperature? Where are you going?” she said.

 

Jane Rumpf ’25 recalled, “We all imagined our own bus. I pictured a school bus, but some people imagined a flying bus with decorations all over.” When Mallory Neff ‘25 first heard the metaphor of the bus, she found it confusing. By the end of the retreat, she came to appreciate what it meant. “I thought it was a really good term to use because it is important that everyone on this team is aware that we have one chance, personally, to be on that bus. If you get off, you’re not allowed to get back on.” She acknowledged that an emphasis on unity was not as clear in the past. Now, she wants to be “motivated and super-engaged.”

 

Kasemodel applied this metaphor to being a member of the basketball team. “Being on the bus means us being one unit, to be on this ride throughout this season. What does the bus look like that you want to be on? This is a metaphor for buying into our team, feeling a spiritual connection, being ready to compete at the beginning of the season.”

 

In the past, teams experienced some bad chemistry; current players recognize the potential problems that can arise if a team isn’t strongly united. The girls talked about being half on and half off the bus, which led to a deeper sense of the team’s values. “The girls all agreed that you get one ticket onto the bus; if you hop off the bus, you don’t get back on,” Kasemodel said.

 

The team talked about personal characteristics. Kasemodel views the players as very self-aware, more than one might expect from high school students. “We talked about positive traits and flaws—the individual gifts each player brings to the bus. What are your gifts on and off the court? We talked a lot about the gifts that God has given them and why that is important. We talked about finding God in all things.” At first some girls did not want to talk about themselves but eventually started to share. One girl said, “I’m a great listener.” Another said, “I can get along with anyone.”

 

The retreat moved from answering the question “Who are you?” to “Who are we? What do we want to represent?” The girls wanted to be open to change and growth. This thread led to talking about leadership and helping each other grow.

 

“On the court this year we don’t have one big superstar,” Kasemodel said. “We have six seniors, one junior, one sophomore and two freshmen on Varsity. On any given day, any of them can produce what we need. For us to be as successful as I know we can be, it takes all the players, not just five.”

 

Asked about a team without an obvious star player, Neff commented, “It is something that we can see as a positive; anyone can step up. We don’t rely on just one or two. What is going to make this team special is that everyone is accountable, and you never know whose day it is. We have seven or eight players who could drop 15 points.”

 

During the team retreat, the girls formed groups to prepare their food. Each meal had one surprise ingredient that challenged planning. “Preparing the meal was teamwork, but it was also competition: who is going to have the best meal, the best presentation?” Kasemodel said. Neff was on the team that won the meal competition, preparing a breakfast that included French toast, eggs and sausage. Their surprise ingredient was yogurt, which they added to the French toast.

 

“Meals were fun,” Kasemodel said. “We said grace and talked about things we were grateful for at the start of each meal. We felt God’s presence in our being so close to each other. In our conversations, the girls are vulnerable, and that’s a time that God is very present with us because God is helping guide where we are trying to go as a team.”

 

All Regis Jesuit teams have the letters AMDG on their uniform. St. Ignatius chose the Latin phrase Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam (AMDG), meaning for the greater glory of God, as the motto for the Society of Jesus. Those letters on the backs of the basketball players’ jerseys remind them that their motivation for everything we do should be to honor and praise God, rather than self-seeking.

 

“On the retreat, we prayed a lot and talked about our own relationships with God,” Neff said. “We talked about how we are going to bring our faith back to practice and games. We pray before games, and that unifies us as a team. It reminds us what we are playing for. It goes back to doing something that is bigger than just you, something bigger than the team: it is for God. You can go out there and play and feel God beside you. It is something bigger than sports.”

 

Iliana Greene ‘25 said, “As athletes we have to know that God is present in all areas of our lives. The main place that we see God as a team is in our gym. We listen to music, work hard and keep good vibes in there, so it has become somewhat of a happy place where we see God. We also see God as a team when we do a team prayer before each game. We get in a circle and wrap our arms around each other. It’s a good way to calm ourselves and remind each other of the gifts that God has given us and that we have faith in his plan for us as a team and as individuals.”

 

AMDG expresses the intentionality that the retreat stressed. “I think it is easy to come in for two hours and say you did a lot during practice, but it is a different thing to leave knowing that you did everything you could that day,” Neff said.

 

Rumpf sees AMDG as “being grateful for what you are given and not forgetting the little things. “Just think how lucky we are to play at the school where we are and to make it to the Coliseum [for the State tournament],” Rumpf said. She doesn’t see that chemistry and connection present in some of the teams they play.

 

At the end of the retreat, Kasemodel asked the girls to make up the rules for being on the bus. They took ownership for goal-setting, and all signed a sheet with the rules that included uplifting and holding each other accountable and remembering that both the good and challenging times are fleeting.

 

“I think we all learned so much about each other on the retreat,” Rumpf said. “One of our rules is do everything for the team, even if you’re away from the team. All your actions affect the team; it brings self-awareness to everybody and that makes us more intentional in what we do—how you act at school, how you talk to teachers.”

 

Kasemodel said, “The one that’s important to me is the ‘One Ticket’ idea—we want to keep all these girls together and that’s what the season is like. The way we are passengers on that bus will affect our season and how successful we are.”