Greetings from Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts! My name is Megan Methven and I am a junior on the Stonehill College basketball team.  First, I'd like to jump right in and familiarize readers with the Stonehill campus.

Stonehill is exactly what the name implies - a giant, stone hill, where on top resides a semi-impenetrable castle/fortress/liberal arts education.  Inside the castle are all the faculty in full armor - mathematics and English, history and philosophy, even some priests since we are a Roman Catholic college - all armed with calculators and battle axes and, of course, iPods.  On the first day of school every September, the incoming student body has to storm the castle.  We call this ceremony, "The Storming of the Castle." Aka... Freshman Orientation.  Those of us who get inside are called freshmen and are given the keys to a higher education; those of us who don't make it have to go to places like Harvard and Yale.

Okay, maybe I'm embellishing what the first day of college was like.  Although Stonehill does in fact have a bit of history, and does have a shovel museum in the center of it all (more on this shovel museum in a future post).   

But on to the real purpose of this blog - basketball. 

This year, I am looking forward to sharing with you each step of the journey, and I'm fortunate to have this opportunity to write my own blog!  Stonehill is one of 16 teams who compete in the Northeast 10, one of the strongest leagues in Division II.  We finished the season last year with a 27-5 record, won the Northeast 10 regular season title, and won the Northeast 10 tournament championship. Coming off of such a strong season, the bar is set that much higher, and each one of us is expecting to go further.  The sky is the limit for our team this year, and I cannot wait to see how we put it all together. 

The start of this season has been a bit different than ones in the past.  Last Thursday we played an exhibition game against the University of Connecticut in Gampel Pavilion, the Division I top ranked team in women's basketball.  Growing up I have always watched UConn play on television, but never dreamed of actually playing against them.  Although it can be a bit daunting to play a team with such a great history of winning, we were proud of the way we played and the way we represented our school. This experience was something none of us will ever forget.   

Now we are looking ahead to this upcoming weekend.  This past week we have practiced hard, preparing for our upcoming tournament.  We will be playing Shepherd and Bloomfield, two teams that we do not regularly see during our season.  This is another great opportunity for us before we head into NE10 play. 

I'll be updating this blog every week, to keep all of you informed on how our season is going.  I look forward to sharing the 2008-2009 Skyhawk's season with all of you.

Talk to you soon!

Meg