Centre College Athletics Photo
In high school, she was part of Bowling Green’s state championship teams. As a freshman at Centre College last season, she averaged 6.5 points, 1.9 rebounds and 19.7 minutes per game with three starts to help the Colonels reach the NCAA Tournament.
This season, though, her role has changed because Centre lost some “big pieces” off last year’s team that finished 21-8.
“We were very senior led last year and everybody is going to have to take a step up this year,” said Campbell. “Juniors are having to fill that leadership role and Coach (Wendie Austin) has told us (sophomores) that we don’t get to be underclassmen again. We have to do more. For me, I am just trying to step up any way I can where we lost four big seniors.”
One of those seniors was Bailey Rucker, a consistent scorer and all-around player with a huge personality on and off the court. The 5-foot-9 Campbell often went against Rucker in practice last season.
“She definitely pushed me a lot during practice. We had to guard each other quite a bit last year because we played the same position and she showed me a lot,” Campbell said. “If you saw her having a rare bad game and was subbed out, she was still the loudest person on the bench and she was the voice you would still hear. If everybody came out flat or playing bad, she was the one to get everyone to rally together. She was that voice that was always there for us trying to hype us up and she always made plays at the biggest times.”
Campbell does not have the same huge personality as Rucker, last year’s conference player of the year. She’s not sure any one person can do what Rucker did.
“We have juniors filling the leadership role but I think as a team we are going to try and be energetic. We are relying on the freshmen to step up and help the eight older players. We are going to be willing to have tough conversations with each other and be able to take it and build off it and not take anything personal,” Campbell said.
Campbell described herself as a “no drama player” on her high school recruiting profile who was interested in winning and not personal numbers. She admits she was surrounded by high school teammates who are also now playing college basketball. She believes it was the same way at Centre last year with the talented seniors she got to play with and learn from.
Campbell has always been a potent 3-point shooter but has never been one to hunt shots. She scored a career-high 23 points in s 67-44 road win over Hollins on 9-for-21 shooting, including 5-for-9 from 3. The next day in a win over Roanoke she took only four shots.
“I like taking shots but if I go out and I’m missing, I kind of view it as selfish to keep shooting. I have to figure out that sometimes when I am having an off night, I maybe need to keep shooting and get back in a rhythm. I don’t want to be selfish but I know there will be times I need to get up more shots this season,” she said.
“You don’t want drama on the team. I didn’t want a college coach to call and ask about me and have somebody say I would come with a lot of baggage on the court and gets in trouble all the time. I do like to be drama free. I just want to be part of a team working together to be the best we can be and I think we have that this year.
“My parents didn’t really deal with a lot of drama not just in basketball but in life in general. They didn’t like things to be messy and instilled that in me. I learned the less drama you are involved in, the better you and your team will be.”
Campbell was not always a prolific shooter. In sixth grade she was “extremely small” and couldn’t make a 3-pointer.
“I would just air ball every single shot. I talked to my coach about it and he said I had to learn how to get the ball up there (to the basket). So I had to focus on getting stronger and my seventh-grade year it started to click,” the Centre sophomore, who is averaging 11.7 points per game and shooting 39 percent from 3-point range, said. “By eighth-grade year I could tell I was better at shooting than anything else. “
She started a strength training program in seventh grade and still goes to the same trainer now on college breaks to work out. She tore her ACL her high school junior year and had to do physical therapy. But as soon as she could walk without a brace, she went back to her trainer.
“I’m not playing in the brace this year. I went to him over the summer and we focused only on strengthening my right leg, so that it wouldn’t be such a mental block to play without a brace and that really helped me,” Campbell said.
She lifts weights regularly at Centre College with her teammates and also does speed and agility drills in the preseason with the Centre training staff.
“I don’t know if I would ever say I liked doing all that but when I was coming back after being hurt I did like it because I knew I needed it,” she said. “I couldn’t play basketball, so I had to put my effort towards something else. I enjoyed being able to work out and now I appreciate every game I get to play even more.”
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Centre (3-0) returns to action Saturday hosting Berry in the Lee’s Famous Recipe Classic.
