A few weeks back the theme for THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE was BLACK & WHITE. I used a picture of the Johnny Orr Statue from Hilton Coliseum as my submission, but you are a dang fool if you think that was the only BLACK & WHITE image I took that week. A dang fool!
I always use that week as an excuse to blow the dust off the old A72 and play around with it’s high contrast monochrome setting and fire off at least 100 pictures with it.
Here is the final collection of the images I took with it on the 7th day, but didn’t use for my submission:
It is bittersweet looking at these pictures. So many of them are taken at an Iowa State Women’s basketball game. Their season ended not that long ago. It was a disappointing season. There is no other way to look at it. For the 3rd time in 4 years Iowa State was highly ranked in the preseason. For the 3rd time in 4 years they couldn’t even get out of the first round of the NCAA Tournament. That isn’t the bitter part. Yes, nobody wants to watch a team underachieve year after year after year after year after year after year. It isn’t much fun.
However, that isn’t the bitter part. The bitter part is that even though this season started promising and then was derailed by injuries, there was still a lot of sweet in the season. Some of my favorite players to ever wear the Cardinal and Gold were on this year’s team. Not even the stars like Audi Crooks or Addy Brown or Jada Williams. Although I loved watching them play. But I also loved watching Kenzie Hare and Reese Beatty and Reagan Wilson play and of course Arianna Jackson.
And now, barely more than a week after their season ended with an underwhelming loss to a bad Syracuse team, they are almost all gone. So far 9.. YES NINE… members of last year’s team have entered the transfer portal and are gone. And that is just of the writing of this entry. There could be more before this publishes and more after it publishes. But not many more. We are down to only 3 players left on the roster.
- GRADUATED
- Sydney Harris
- TRANSFERRING
- Addy Brown
- Jada Williams
- Kenzie Hare
- Reese Beaty
- Alisa Williams
- Reagan Wilson
- Lilly Tualelei
- Alli Tanke
- Freya Jensen
I don’t know what is going to happen with the rest of the offseason. I know what I want to happen, but I’ve hoped that for several years. But maybe this will be the year!
Even if I don’t get my wish, I do wish all of these former Cyclones well in the future. I hope a couple of them even find their way into the WNBA.