After playing high school ball in both Connecticut and Minnesota, Maren Walseth chose a university in between the two: Penn State. The Lady Lions are sure glad she did.

The Year 2000 has certainly been good to Maren Walseth. Since the new year began, the junior forward from Penn State has twice earned Big Ten Player of the Week honors, while helping the Lady Lions to the Big Ten regular season championship (15-1) and a spot in the Final Four (Penn State feel to Connecticut in the semi-finals).

Walseth earned her first Big Ten Player of the Week honors in January after scoring a career-high 35 points in an 85-71 win over Michigan. She earned Co-Player of the Week honors again on Feb. 14 after scoring 17 points and grabbing a career-high 15 rebounds in a 78-67 win over Purdue.

Walseth is second on the team in both scoring (14.1 points per game) and rebounds (5.9 per game). She also leads the team in field goal percentage at 52.2 percent.

In this interview, Walseth talks about Penn State's great season, playing for two high school teams, and being on a team with only 10 players on the roster.

Gball: The past couple of months you have really come on and your game has stepped up. What's been the difference?
Walseth: I've had a lot of questions similar to that and I can't say there's been one thing or one game or one moment that changed everything. But I think that I worked hard over the off-season and the beginning of this season and, maybe, my confidence is there. [It's that,] combined with the fact that the other people on our team are playing excellent. We have shooters that you have to guard on the outside, so the inside is open, and [Andrea Garner] is obviously a force, everyone knew about her coming into the season. She gets double-teamed and more attention gets paid to her. I don't think it's necessarily anything that I do in particular, but kind of what my teammates do.

You mentioned that you did a lot over the summer. What did you do in the off-season to improve your game?
I did a lot of conditioning. I think anyone can teach moves, but conditioning is a big thing. We work on that during the season, but that's almost too late in a way. You have to be able to withstand all the conditioning during the season, so it helps to work out hard during the summer. Basically, I followed our conditioning program--running, working out, lifting--and I played pick up games. Sure, I worked individually on my shot and post moves or whatever, but I think the best way to get better is to play pick up games--play with guys; play with people who are more physical, who are quicker, who make you look like a fool and swat your shot sometimes. Then you figure out new ways to get around them. That's pretty much what I did.

How much different was that from what you had done during previous summers?
I don't think it was a whole lot different as far as what I did. But maybe the attitude I took into it [was different]. I'm the kind of person who needs to do something every day. I knew there was a starting spot opening up for the beginning of this season and I wanted to make sure I did everything possible to put myself in the best possible position to get there. I didn't want to think, "If I would have just lifted that extra week" or "If I didn't take those two days off on vacation." I didn't want to be in that kind of position. So I took more an attitude of "I have to do this every day, and not just go out and go through the motions, but actually get better every day," whether it was conditioning, or strength, or feeling better about how the pickup games went.

You mentioned playing in the pickup games and playing against the best competition that you could. How tough was it to go in there knowing you might your shot knocked away or you might suffer some failures out there?
It's hard. It's one thing to play here at school where they know that the majority of the girls who play are on the team. They kind of know who you are, and they respect you enough to push you, but not kill you. But at home, the place I play over the lunch hour, I'm the only girl and yeah, they take advantage of me and abuse me. They make sure I guard the worst player and their best player guards me or things like that. You take a mental beating every once in a while. There would days when I come back and say, "Oh my gosh, this is horrible. I stink." But at the same time I know that's what everyone else is doing, and if I feel like that, I'm sure my teammates are home doing their thing, and they feel like that--and definitely the competition is. Yeah, there were negative times and you feel bad about it at times, but you had to look at the overall picture, not just the five shots that got swatted in a row.

You won academic All-Big Ten honors last year and you've been nominated for Academic All-America this year. How do you balance the academic side and the athletic side?
It's a whole lot of time management. I think the people here at Penn State in the academic support center are very good from day one when you get here, as far as having to go to study hall 10 hours a week and check in there. My freshman year I did not watch TV, and I did not have a social life. I knew nobody other than my 11 teammates. I think as much as that was a pain in the butt at the time, that definitely has helped me now--as far as knowing when I have to study, when I have time to watch TV, when I have time to watch a basketball game or go out. But the bottom line is you have to have your priorities straight.

I don't want to use the saying "choose your friends wisely," but the majority of my friends outside the basketball team know why I'm here. They know I have to go to bed at 11 or 12 o'clock, at the latest, every night. I can't be up doing crazy things at one or two in the morning. Even on the weekends, I'm dead tired by 12 o'clock. So I have to give credit to my friends outside the basketball team to look at me like that, and respect the fact that I'm different in that respect than they are and that I have to sleep. That's the number-one priority. I would die for some of the crazy nights that they can have. That would be great once in a while. But then at the same time, I would never trade any of it for the feeling at the Big Ten tournament or the NCAAs or after a big win like Purdue. I wouldn't trade any of those feelings for one or two nights that I could stay up until three o'clock and do whatever I wanted.

What's your major and why?
Broadcast Journalism. My mom's a school teacher and I really didn't see myself wanting to do that. My dad is an attorney and I didn't know if that's really what I wanted to do. I would like to stay involved in sports because it's been such a big part of my life. The dream when I was a sophomore in high school was to be an athletic trainer for the Dallas Cowboys. I thought it would be a great way to stay in sports. Then I quickly realized that you really couldn't really be a student trainer and an athlete in college at the same time, so I needed to pick something else.

Eventually I would like to be a color commentator or play-by-play announcer for basketball games. Obviously, I have a lot to do between now and then. I think that's one way to stay involved in sports, have an impact, and keep watching the game, maybe help other people or talk to other people. Robin Roberts was on campus last year and hearing her speak was really motivating.

As a high school player, you played for two different teams, moving from Minnesota (Jefferson High School in Bloomington) to Connecticut (Simsbury High School) before moving back to Minnesota as a senior. How tough was it going back and forth like that?
I felt like a freshman twice. My freshman year in Minnesota I had grown up with all those people, I knew everybody, and it was the next logical step in anyone's career. I had a great freshman year and we won a state championship and all was good. Then I moved halfway across the country, and I had to be a freshman all over again as far as adjusting to a new school, new teachers, a new way of doing things, a new basketball coach and program. And that was really hard by itself.

I think that the East Coast, especially New England, has a different way of life [than Minnesota]. It's not necessarily bad or good, it was just different from the way I had grown up and the way my parents had grown up. It was much more fast paced and even after living there two years, we still kind of felt like the new people on the block. That's not bad, it's just something we noticed as being a little different than what we were used to. So, when I went back to Minnesota for my senior year, obviously it was going home and it was no problem. It was very fun and it was a great thing to do. I wanted to go back to the same high school and finish my high school career with the people I started it with.

Do you think you gained anything from being in Connecticut for a couple of years?
The whole way I looked at it from day one was "This will only be for three years. I'm going to go to college eventually so the longest I'll be here for is three years." You have to make the most out of any given situation. Maybe it made my transition to college a little easier as far as being thrown into a new system academically, socially, basketball-wise, and everything. I had to adjust on my own. I had to figure things out for myself.

At the same time, I think it brought my family a lot closer. My sister and I are seven years apart so the day-to-day issues and problems aren't the same. I didn't like her when we were younger and she didn't like me. I was a pest and she was a pest. I think we got a little closer in that time period, because I didn't have friends to pull me away every night and she didn't have friends to pull her away every night. We were forced, whether we liked it or not, to do things together.

How about on the court? Did you notice a difference in the style of play or the quality of play in Connecticut and Minnesota?
I definitely could tell the difference. Simsbury (her high school in Connecticut) was a very soccer-oriented town. Our high school had won state championships two or three years before I got there. I played soccer, but I was not very good. I was the opposite of everybody else, because everybody played soccer there and then played another sport to kind of stay in shape. Whereas I played that other sport (basketball) with my life and I played soccer to stay in shape. So I was kind of the flip side to everybody else. But soccer is definitely head and shoulders better in Connecticut than it is in Minnesota.

In Minnesota, basketball teams generally had one excellent player, two or three pretty good players and a good supporting cast, and then the seventh, eighth, and ninth players off the bench were decent. Whereas in Connecticut, it seemed like there was one good player and your fifth starter was at times struggling. That was the feeling I got overall. Obviously there were some great teams--Nykesha Sales came from the same conference and she was excellent and amazing--but generally there were only one or two good players per team there, whereas in Minnesota there was one excellent player and two or three real good players.

Now you're at Penn State, which is kind of in-between the two. Is Penn State more like being in Minnesota or being in New England?
I think everyone was kind of shocked when I decided to come to Penn State. They were like, "Oh, you're going back out East." I guess because it's in the Big Ten, I'd never thought of Penn State as being in the East. I think of it, even now, as being in the Midwest and that really comes from the Big Ten ties and going back to the Midwest practically every weekend during the season. I think because it's a college town and we are kind of out in the middle of nowhere and nothing is here except Penn State, I would say it's a little more warm and inviting--more like Minnesota than the feeling I got when I lived in Connecticut.

What's it like for you when you go back to Minnesota to play the Gophers? Is that an exciting time for you or is there a little more pressure?
It's very exciting. There are old high school teammates, their parents, coaches, and friends who go to the University of Minnesota, who come see me play and all of my relatives; aunts, uncles, grandparents, all that kind of stuff. So there's a little added incentive, since I'm a thousand miles away from them and they maybe hear about me once or twice a season. Now I get to go home and show them that I'm still a good basketball player, and even though you don't hear about me, I still do the same things I did in high school. So I definitely look forward to going back to Minnesota to play in front of my home crowd and watch the news and listen to the radio stations, all that kind of stuff. My freshman year and this year we were able to go to my house for dinner the night before the game because of the way the travel worked out and that was fun.

This year Penn State has only 10 players on the roster. What are the pros and cons of playing on a small squad like that?
No one can complain about playing time, that's for sure. There's plenty of that to be given out. I think you can make it be negative, if you talk about it being negative as far as foul trouble or being afraid someone will get hurt. At the beginning of the season that was talked about quite often in the local media here.

We've really tried to turn it into [a positive]. Getting 10 people to agree on something is a heck of a lot easier than getting 15 people to agree. I think then there's less stress and less yapping about "Why were you late?" That just makes everyone a little closer. I've played on a number of teams with a number of different personalities and I really think this is one of the closer teams I've played on as far as getting along.

Is playing in the WNBA something you've been thinking about a lot?
I don't know how much I really thought [playing professionally] would ever happen, but I wanted to do that since I was in middle school or high school. It was cool to hear the guys in class say they wanted to be professional athletes and I figured I could do that, too. Before the ABL and the WNBA it was kind of like "Well, you have to go overseas," and OK, that's cool. But then as the ABL and WNBA started, it became apparent you could do that here and then I wanted to do that. If I could play here that would be great. The next step is to play professionally here in the United States and that would be great.

Would you play overseas?
Obviously, I would love to play in the WNBA, but I have traveled overseas. Our team went this past August, I went with the Big Ten all-stars, and I went with my family one time. I think that it would be great to be able to take advantage of an opportunity given to you. That's been my Dad's big thing as long as I can remember: Why say no without trying? If you get an opportunity why not go and try? What's the worst thing you can do, not succeed? I can't say I would do it for 10 years, but a couple of seasons here or there, you'd almost have to be stupid to not take advantage of something like that.

What do you think it will take for you to be able to play professionally?
A lot. I think I definitely have to still become stronger. I know I get pushed around a lot by the bigger people who have more momentum behind them. I think I need to work on dribbling ability, my handle. That's more and more apparent in every WNBA game you see. All the players you see, everyone can dribble the ball up the court. That's a big thing and that goes along with an outside shot because I am only 6-1. Yeah, that's tall by some standards, but you're playing against Europeans who are 6-7, 6-8 and can actually move--I'm downright short. I need to be able to be more versatile and hit some shots from the outside.

What's it like playing for Coach Portland?
She's a very intense coach, but at the same time she's very enthusiastic. That's one of the reasons I came to Penn State. I liked the way that she was the first one clapping and giving her players five when they came off the bench, and she was excited after a good play. I'm a bubbly, outgoing person who likes to show my emotions and my enthusiasm. There's a good balance--she yells at us, I won't deny it and she won't deny it. But I think there's a good balance as far as being able to talk to her as a person and then there's the coach part to her too. I think she does a good job of walking that line.

What's it like playing at a school with a big-time football program like Penn State?
I love it. I really love it. I'm a big football fan. I have season tickets in the student section and I go crazy just like everyone else does. I think it's a definite benefit for us as far as school spirit is concerned. When I was being recruited, I went to other schools and there wasn't a whole lot of school spirit. It's the combination of the football team, the women's volleyball team, the fact that there really isn't another school within 150 miles of us here. It's crazy Penn State football, basketball, soccer, baseball, whatever it is, there's nothing really else to occupy your time.

What advice would you have for high school players who are looking to play in college?
My advice would be to pick your dreams and, whatever they are, to go for them and not let anyone tell you that you can't. But at the same time, they don't just come true; you have to work extremely hard. You can't be afraid to stay in on a Friday night to do your homework, or to go to sleep or to go out and shoot extra.

I was told so often it's how much you put on the basketball court and that's definitely true, but you won't survive in college unless you do the other things too. You have to be able to manage your time. You have to be able to tell your friends, "No, I need to go to sleep tonight." You have to be able to balance everything you want to do and not let anyone tell you that you can't do it. But also know that it's a lot of hard work. At the same time, from being here, it's all worth it.

Interview conducted by Gball Assistant Editor Dennis Read in February, 2000.