Pros vs. Joes No. 9: Mikayla Pivec pivots to comfortable spot playing in Spain
It has taken her awhile, but my favorite female athlete in Oregon State history is finally having a rewarding experience playing pro basketball.
What’s in a name? A lot of fun stuff …
To our readers:
I’ve always gotten a kick out of some of the unusual names of sports figures. For fun, I’m re-posting a column I wrote for the Portland Tribune in 2013 on the same subject from a national perspective (Can’t believe I left out race car driver Dick Trickle.)
Rueck: ‘We’re confident, we’re gritty. That’s what it takes this time of year’
Patience, a poet once wrote, “is a companion of wisdom.”
I’ve grown to appreciate Scott Rueck’s wisdom since our paths first crossed more than a decade ago.
It has taken me until this year to understand his patience.
In late January, the Oregon State women’s basketball team was 3-5 and had lost more games to COVID-19 than it had played. Having lost three top players from the previous season to graduation (Mikayla Pivec), transfer (Destiny Slocum) and injury (Kennedy Brown) and dealing with an almost entirely new lineup, it would have been easy for a coach to write this off as a building year and starting thinking about next season.
Talking Beaver women’s hoops, Along with a little golf, with Coach Scott Rueck …
I’ve known Scott Rueck since shortly after he took over the Oregon State women’s basketball helm in 2010 and have admired the program he has built from the rubble he inherited from his predecessor, LaVonda Wagner.