KENNESAW, Ga. – Have you ever sat down at your kitchen table and looked at 1,000 pieces to a puzzle scattered from one end to another and realized you need some help to finish the picture that is shown on the outside cover of the box you bought from the store?
Piece-by-piece, puzzles and projects are built from the ground up, needing teamwork to accomplish the goals and missions that are set. That is exactly the approach fourth-year head coach Nitra Perry and the Kennesaw State women's basketball team has been doing for quite some time now.
With assistant coach Nicci Kelly in charge of the Owls' team building activities, the Owls have done some very unique activities to build trust, leadership skills, communication and a bond within the family on and off the court.
"Nicci Kelly is in charge of the team building activities this year. Our goal for team building is to show that we are humans outside of basketball and that we care about each other," Perry said. It's about being around the people and caring about each other. Ultimately, this team has been the closest since I've been here and I feel really good about the future of the team."
Perry and the Owls have done activities such as a scavenger hunt, Thanksgiving gatherings, Christmas parties and fun exercises on the court that include drills blindfolded. But the biggest project for 2015-16 came before the season tipped off with building a team puzzle that now resides in the locker room.
"Everyone took a piece of the puzzle and wrote down one thing that they brought to the team. If everybody brings that one thing to the table then we are a really good team," Perry said.
That puzzle has been a huge success as all 14 members of the team participated in the exercise.
"Coach Kelly gave us a little puzzle piece and told us to write a word on what we would give to the team for the season. I chose energy and my teammates chose other words to put together a puzzle to represent coming together as a team," freshman forward Allison Johnson said. "It helps build confidence and trust with your teammates. It's really important to trust each other on and off the court, but it also builds confidence because on the court you have to listen to your teammates and not just see what's going on."
That confidence and communication showed in KSU's most recent game, its Atlantic Sun Conference opener against Lipscomb at the KSU Convocation Center on Jan. 9. The dramatic come-from-behind victory showed the pieces fitting together.
A true test, the team and staff came together to overcome a nine-point deficit and post a 55-54 victory a scrappy Bisons team.
"The process came together against Lipscomb. We kept talking about one more possession or one more stop, and everything came together like our puzzle," Perry said. "It really led back to what we were talking about with the puzzle and bringing that one thing to the team to help us be a greater team.
"It's really about putting your pieces together throughout the season and this is the time to do it," Perry added. "We still have pieces that are left unknown, and that's the future. We have goals and mission statements and it's about the process and the common goal."
Perry, who played at Mississippi State and coached at Toledo prior to coming to Kennesaw State, is no stranger to how important team building exercises are and has brought her past experiences to the Owls' program.
"Team building has always been super important to me. I learned growing up as a player and during my last coaching stop at Toledo, we did a lot of team building. "As a coach, you realize that it's not just the game, but it's about how much you care about each other.
"You can take the basketball hat off and a lot of it applies to life outside of the game which is the beauty of it," Perry added. "It really is all about helping them become young ladies and developing them as more than just basketball players."
With KSU, it's all about laying the foundation and reaching the goals and missions as a team. Last year, Perry and the Owls began building that foundation with layers of bricks that symbolize each player's goals that they would accomplish each game.
"We would write on the bricks what we would bring that specific game," junior forward Aaeron Smith said. "It was pretty cool because everybody built that foundation of the bricks and they all came together throughout the season. We had a wall by the time the season was over."
The Owls brought these bricks to away games and wrote on them beforehand while setting goals for each other. It was a process of building on a foundation and each individual realizing that they have to put a lot into the process before seeing a final result.
"I love doing our team building activities. The advantages to it are to help us come together as a team. It's the little things we do that don't necessarily involve basketball that help us build trust and create a bond," Smith said.
That bond is something student-athletes will remember for a lifetime following their careers at Kennesaw State.
