Van Sickle’s Resilience Teaches Us All a Lesson

Feb. 19, 2022 - BOZEMAN, Montana – The text came every Sunday night.

"Every week she sent a group text to me, the (athletic) trainer, the strength coach, Coach Sunny (Smallwood, MSU women's basketball associate head coach), the coaching staff in general" Montana State women's basketball coach Tricia Binford said of senior guard Ashley Van Sickle. "She mapped out her schedule and when she was available for her extra time (in the week to come)."

The plan those texts communicated proved crucial to Van Sickle surviving a rigorous junior season that included both basketball and student teaching in a Bozeman elementary school. "She literally kept us all organized because she was the only one who knew her (student teaching) schedule. To manage that, to have the energy for that, and on top of that doing rehab for an injury, was pretty monstrous. It's absolutely amazing what she pulled off."

Van Sickle isn't quite sure how she managed it all, either, but she's glad for the challenge. "It was crazy," she says with a laugh, "but I wouldn't change it for the world."

Arriving as a lauded recruit from the Denver area in 2017-18 – "I always called Ashley a point guard," says Binford, "but she'd always say she's a combo guard, so that's Ashley" – she showed promise as a freshman, playing in all 31 games, and averaging 2.9 points and 1.3 assists per game. The next year she made a similar contribution but missed a chunk of the season with an injury. Then the following year, 2019-20, while her teammates steamrolled toward one of the best seasons in Big Sky history, Van Sickle could only watch.

"It stunk," she said of the injury that sidelined her for MSU's entire, historic campaign, "but I've grown so much it's absolutely insane. I wouldn't change it. Yeah, it was really difficult, but I'm so grateful for the adversity I was able to overcome. The hardest part is basketball was such an identity for me, it was who I was, so having that taken away, it was like, 'What am I supposed to do now?' And I figured it out."

The figuring it out part didn't happen all at once. It began in simple ways. "I got into yoga," she said, "I got into coaching, I went and volunteered (in a grade school classroom), so those things helped me figure out who I was again."

While she was figuring herself out, others in the Bobcat program figured her out. "She is always looking to get better, no matter what," Bobcat guard Darian White says of what she observed from Van Sickle when she was injured. "During my freshman year when she was hurt, she was on the sideline every day, every practice, working on ballhandling drills. At one point she was not even able to walk but she had her foot up and she was dribbling and watching YouTube videos (of ballhandling drills) and watching the part of our practices that she needed to learn. You could see her dripping in sweat on the sideline from her own workouts."

Similarly, Binford grew even more impressed with Van Sickle during the injury. "First of all, she's super proactive," MSU's long-time head coach and a former point guard said. "A lot of times when kids have an injury and are removed (from the team) the hardest thing is to get yourself going. A lot of times you'll see kids sitting on the side and watching practice, but Ashley was always intentional about doing something.

"She'd ask for extra conditioning from our strength coach, and she was also asking for extra rehab that she could be doing with our trainer," according to Binford. "She was always with a ball in her hands, so she was doing stationary ballhandling on the side or jumping in to assist with passing (in drills), she was just really good at staying engaged and doing above and beyond. Her ability to work herself back is all on her shoulders."

In 2020-21, the Covid season, Van Sickle returned healthy and again contributed as White's backup. "Last year she was predominantly a backup (point guard)," Binford said. Playing behind White sharpened Van Sickle's admiration for her teammate, but as the 2021-22 campaign approached a new possibility emerged.

"When Tori (Martell, who started with White in the backcourt last year) graduated," Binford said, "we were rotating kids based on production and what they bring to the table. Ashley's just such a savvy player, somebody that makes the right plays. That's one of the reasons she's found herself on the floor so much in combination with Darian, but I also think she brings out the best in Darian. I think they're complimentary, she brings a lot of steadiness to the team and the kids really feed off of her."

Van Sickle has appreciated her evolution in the Bobcat system. "I actually never got to be on the floor (with White) last year, I'd always sub in for her, give her a breather. Being on the floor with Darian White is unreal, that kid is unbelievable, she's probably the best player I've ever played with. I'm honored to be on the court with her, it's been awesome. I sometimes have a little identity crisis being the two guard," Van Sickle laughed, "like, 'I don't know what to do.'"

An elementary education major, Van Sickle found herself student teaching last year in a fourth grade classroom at a Bozeman elementary school. She could often be seen storming into Brick Breeden Fieldhouse in a quick-change act reminiscent of a superhero.

"I would be in my teachers' clothes, driving to campus, taking my shoes off, running into the locker room, I'd come into practice and the girls were already sweaty, they'd be like, 'What's up Ash, you're here!'" Van Sickle said, her voice cresting with near-astonishment that she made it happen every day. "I'd be, 'Oh my gosh,' it was just a draining day sometimes. It was a nice escape, not that I didn't like teaching, but it was a lot, and coming to basketball was a nice escape."

Enter her Sunday night texts that lined out her Rubik's Cube of a weekly schedule. "I'd wake up, go to work essentially, I wouldn't look at my phone until 3 pm to all the team's messages to what's happening," she said. "After practice and after I got shots up with the coaches, I'd have to go do my lesson planning, I'd have to go get ready for the next day, I'd get ready for (classroom) observations."

One of the members of the Bobcat women's program most impressed was Smallwood, herself an education major during her playing days at Boise State. "She really showed her love for the game, and her love for her teammates and for winning," Smallwood said. "She would text and say, 'Hey, I'm going to be there from whenever to whenever and I'd love it if we could shoot. So, after practice we usually got out the shooting machine because she could get a lot more reps, and we would make drills out of it."
Smallwood and Van Sickle constructed work that incorporated shooting, passing and receiving, ballhandling, and conditioning during one grueling session. To Smallwood's amazement, Van Sickle would occasionally make a simple request. "What I loved is that there would be days when she'd say, 'I feel like I need to work harder. Can we change it up?' So, I had to change what I was doing because she didn't want to get behind in conditioning. She was the driving force of making sure she got in her (work). She was incredibly committed."

That commitment to basketball came to light in another way last summer, when she connected with former Bobcat men's player Mecklen Davis. A high school coach in the area, Davis runs an AAU program in the summer. One of the teams he needed to find a coach for featured a young guard named Brooklyn Binford, Tricia Binford's daughter. The experience gave the winningest coach in Bobcat history a unique look at one of her players.

"She's super high energy, the girls just obviously idolized her and completely looked up to her," Binford said. "She's a relationship coach with the kids, super positive, although that scenario is pretty entertaining. She got them better, she got them to play as a team, she taught the game, they learned a ton, and they absolutely had a blast. They fell in love with Ash."

One incident in particular forces Binford to laugh every time. During a tournament in Las Vegas, which the team of Montanans eventually won, Van Sickle's squad struggled through the first half then seemingly flipped a switch at the intermission and won in come-from-behind fashion.

After the game, Binford quizzed Van Sickle on what drove the turnaround. "As a parent it's so stressful. You're just pacing over there, it's so different than when you're the coach, so I asked her, what did you say to them? She said she became me. She said she just looked at them in the huddle and said, 'You guys figure it out.' To the middle schoolers!"

While she enjoyed her association with Davis – "Mecklen was great! He's a former Bobcat, he has so much passion for the game, he's a great role model for me, I'm very grateful for him" she said – the best part of the summer was working with the players and tapping into a process she hopes remains in her life. "I love the kids," she said. "I'm so competitive, I get so into it. I'd go scout the other teams because I want to win. I would love to coach, I don't know what level, but that would be awesome.

Through all the adversity, Van Sickle has emerged not just as a stronger person but a better player. "The biggest things I've seen are more consistency in how she handles herself," Smallwood said. "She would come very focused on the job at hand every day, what she has to do. She came to practice not only making sure that she did what she was supposed to but making sure the team understood what we're trying to accomplish. The growth has been from being somebody learning the system to somebody who has mastered the system and is bringing youngsters along."

White has enjoyed Van Sickle transitioning to a fellow backcourt starter. "I think of us as yo-yos," the all-conference junior said. "Because we're both point guards and can also both play the two it's really easy to play with her and adjust in the moment. If she's going to get the ball, I'll run to the two spot or if she's stopping the ball I'll run to the two spot, and vice versa. I feel like we've had a connection since the day I got here."

Smallwood also enjoys her connection with Van Sickle from the standpoint of applying an education in education. "We were both education majors and we used to talk about that a lot. I did student teaching (while playing basketball), and we would share stories about our experiences. But I think it plays in because No. 1 you think like a teacher which means you're thinking process, and No. 2 you're constantly looking for the end result from the process. Teachers as players, it's a natural fit because as she grows into that role, she's becoming a coach on the floor and that fits because she's utilizing her teaching abilities."

Whether it be the agony of missing one-third of her career with injuries or the rigors of working through a semester student teaching while remaining committed to a Division I basketball team, Binford's respect for Van Sickle grows even as the sands of her playing days pass through the hourglass of her final season. Van Sickle and her Bobcat teammates play what is likely the final home game of 2021-22 on Saturday at 2 pm, hosting Southern Utah.

"A lot of kids would be done with their career, they would have stopped, they would have given up because it was so difficult, it was so challenging to continue," Binford said. "Having an injury repeat itself, so to speak, and the academics. And Ashley found a way to overcome it."

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Ashley Van Sickle

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