Allie Renberg is almost always the first Lady Hornet to arrive at practice. During Christmas break, Renberg spent a lot of extra time in the gym, working on her shot.
All of Renberg’s hard work has shown up in the box score recently, and tonight she will be rewarded with her first start of the season.
“I think she’s really going to be an important ingredient and key factor in terms of our success,” ESU coach Brandon Schneider said. “Because she’s really in the last couple of weeks upgraded the level of our play.”
Renberg, a senior, has admittedly played with a sense of urgency recently. She expected to be a starter coming into the season, but she hurt her knee this summer and had to have surgery, and Alli Volkens emerged as the starting center.
On Dec. 10 at Central Missouri, Renberg suffered another setback, breaking a bone in her left hand during warmups. She played against the Jennies, then sat out a nonconference game against Bethany.
Renberg played through the pain in the conference games during Christmas break and was apprehensive to use her left hand to go for rebounds and it was difficult to catch the ball. She still wears a soft cast on her hand, but it has not affected her as much in the past few weeks, when she has begun to play her best basketball this season.
In Renberg’s last four games, she is shooting 60.8 percent, has had at least five rebounds in three of the four games and she’s averaging 7.8 points. She had one of her best games of the season against Washburn, scoring 10 points, grabbing six rebounds and dishing out two assists in 20 minutes.
“I think she’s been more agressive,” Schneider said. “I think a lot of that has been her hand healing up. Even when she came back to play, she was still reluctant to go get the ball with two hands, which I completely understand. She had a broken bone in her hand… On Saturday, she really attacked the glass with two hands.”
Renberg is also starting to become comfortable in her role, which she defines as a rebounder and spot-up shooter. She’s also been a threat to score from the post with her back to the basket lately.
Before Renberg arrived at Emporia State, she had always been the star. She was an All-American at Iowa Lakes Community College and had been the go-to player growing up in Sleepy Eye, Minn.
“It was really hard at first,” Renberg said. “I told myself, ‘Michelle Stueve, I understand. She’s huge. She’s great.’ But I thought I would be more of a scorer. Because I was so used to being the offensive player.
“That’s all I did was score, and defense wasn’t as hard because the people were shorter. It was really hard to accept it, and I just kind of learned there’s more to basketball than scoring — the little things that might not show up on the stat sheet, but they are very important.”
Renberg not only had to adjust to becoming a role player, she also had to accept playing fewer minutes. She expected to play more this year, but her minutes have decreased from 19.1 per game last year to 16.6 this year.
“I thought this year, I’m a senior, I’ve got experience, I was more confident that I’d probably play more,” she said. “But I’ve come to understand that it takes a lot of hard work — even more than I was putting in — and you can’t give up. There’s times that I could just say, ‘screw it,’ but I didn’t want to do that, because I’m a senior and it’s the last time I can play basketball.”
Schneider has witnessed Renberg’s game mature. When she arrived, Schneider said she was a finesse player, but he believes she has become a more physical player on both ends of the floor.
As she enters the final half of her senior season, Renberg is finally where she wants to be — in the starting lineup — and she is ready to contribute like she always thought she would.
“She’s really been playing well,” Schneider said. “I think she’s coming on at an important time of the year, and practicing and playing like a senior that really wants to accomplish something in her final year.”