Seniors prepare for real world

Seniors prepare for real world

By Kyle Grabowski

Though they all played guard for the CSU women’s basketball team, the future couldn’t be more different for the Rams’ three outgoing seniors. The team’s season ended March 8th with a 63-66 loss to 9th-seeded Air Force in the Mountain West Conference tournament.

Zoi Simmons

Zoi Simmons missed most of the year with a foot injury, but still averaged 2.5 points while dishing out 17 assists in 13 games. After graduation, Simmons plans to stay in Fort Collins for a few more years and possibly volunteer as a firefighter, having just taken her firefighting test.

“The program is tremendous,” she said, “not only for firefighters, but for the community and the people here. I’ve wanted to be a firefighter all my life.”

In terms of continuing her basketball career, Simmons received an offer to play in Portugal over the summer, but is considering her options. “A coach gave an offer to go out there and play, but I’m not too sure,” she said. “We’ll see how that goes.”

Bonnie Barbee

Balancing both sides of the student-athlete role has never been much of a problem for Bonnie Barbee. She averaged nearly six points per game over the course of her Ram career in addition to participating in the university’s honors program. Barbee is a biomedical science major and plans to one day be a doctor.

“I’m going back home to Arizona for a year,” she said. “Kind of taking a year off and doing some volunteer hospital work and trying apply for med school this next go around.” Her first choice would be the University of Arizona because she kept her residency there. “But I’ll go anywhere that takes me,” Barbee said, laughing.

As far as organized basketball is concerned, Barbee’s career is over, but she plans to continue to work out at a local gym to stay in shape.

Sarah Hemmings

The only Colorado native among the women’s basketball team’s graduating seniors travelled a winding career path before she got to CSU. Hemmings originally played basketball and soccer at the University of Northern Colorado before transferring to the University of Arizona to play just soccer after a year.

“I think it was too much for me,” she said, “so I decided to leave and go focus on one sport.”

After one year there, Hemmings transferred again to CSU and didn’t play any sports for a year before walking on to the basketball team last year and playing her junior and senior seasons for the Rams.

She will graduate in May with a degree in management and plans to apply for jobs in Denver while assistant coaching for the Fort Collins Fever 17’s basketball team. “It should be fun,” Hemmings said.