Telegram & Gazette: "Extra Credit For WSU Women's Basketball Team"

By Bill Doyle, Staff Writer

January 28, 2015

Worcester, MA --- Worcester State senior guard Julie Frankian has always loved math, so she was happy to help May Street School elementary students enjoy it as well.

Frankian and her WSU teammates brought math problems to life with second-, third- and fourth-graders on Jan. 14 at the elementary school located next door to the college campus.

Over the previous six years, students from nearby elementary schools attended a noontime WSU game and filled in math packets with their teachers. This year's "Math Madness" event was scheduled for Jan. 8, but classes were cancelled that day at Worcester Public Schools due to dangerously low temperatures. So WSU coach Karen Tessmer arranged for the Lancers to work with the May Street School students at the elementary school's gym.

"At times math can be boring," Frankian said. "So it's fun that you can have an active thing while they're learning. I know that when I was younger if I had something like that I would have freaked out and been so excited because it would have been basketball and a cool way to learn new math problems."

The May Street School students measured the length and width of the court as well as the wing spans of WSU junior forward Bianca Langford and freshman guard Nani Perez. They also used the box score to list the WSU players in order of the number of points they had scored and read the roster to figure out the average size of WSU's players.

"It was cool," Frankian said. "You could tell that the kids really enjoyed it. In my group especially, they were all raising their hands, trying to ask questions. Once I said we were going to measure someone's arm span, they all jumped up and said, 'Me, me, me, me.' They were really into it."

"They all wanted the attention and they all wanted to contribute to everything," WSU freshman Lina Graham said.

"With the practical application of math," May Street School principal Luke Robert said, "kids get to do all of their classwork, but to actually utilize it and put it to real-time, real situational use, is huge."

Graham attended May Street School from kindergarten through sixth grade.

"It just feels like home," Graham said.

Graham's fourth-grade teacher Cathy Stefanides still teaches there.

"I pointed it out to the students that she sat in their seat," Stefanides said of Graham. "It was just wonderful for the kids to see that connection and maybe someday, they will do the same."

The Lancers signed autographs at the end of the Math Madness session. Frankian and Graham even signed a student's arm.

"You'd think we were the Celtics," Tessmer said. "It really is one of our favorite days for our players because the kids come and cheer. They don't care who you are, they just cheer."

Tessmer hopes to schedule another Math Madness day at Chandler Magnet School.

The Lancers (11-7, 2-3 in the MASCAC) have dropped their last four games after winning their previous eight. Their game at Framingham State Tuesday night was snowed out and rescheduled for Thursday.

The 5-foot-8 Frankian, a former Millbury High star, leads the Lancers in scoring with a 15.5 average. Langford, a Holy Name graduate, averages 13.4 points and a team-high 12.4 rebounds. The 6-foot-1 Langford is the team's tallest player. Shannen El-Qasem, a 5-10 senior who graduated from Wachusett Regional, is the next tallest. No one else on the team is taller than 5-8.

"In Division 3, you are lucky if you have a kid over 6 feet," Tessmer said.

Despite their lack of height, the Lancers have out-rebounded their opponents by an average of 41.6-37.2 this season. In a 73-67 loss on Saturday, the Lancers out-rebounded Fitchburg State, 51-33, and had a higher shooting percentage and made more 3-pointers, but committed 31 turnovers to the Falcons' 11. FSU outscored WSU, 28-6, off turnovers.

The Lancers turned it over 32 times in a 67-65 overtime loss to Westfield State, which is unbeaten in the MASCAC.

"It's hard to win a game when you have that many turnovers," Frankian said. "Turnovers have been our killer, but you can take a positive out of it. Against Westfield, we had 32 turnovers, but only lost by two. We had a great opportunity to win that game. They're the best team in the league and there's people getting smoked by them and we lost by only two."

Some of the turnovers have been the result of careless passes, but opponents have also forced some by pressing full court against all of the Lancers, not just freshmen point guards Perez and Allie Lake.

"We need to slow it down and relax," Frankian said. "If we commit a turnover, we need to regroup and pull ourselves together. A lot of the times, it's nothing we can't handle, we just go at a higher speed than we should. When we do break the press, we do an awesome job of it."

Even though the Lancers have lost their last four, they've already won more games than all of last season when they finished 9-17.

"We had and we still do have a very good chance to go far this year," Frankian said. "We have a very good team and we have to keep pushing each other. We can't be satisfied with how we are because we obviously need to do better."

Of the 14 players on WSU's roster, 10 come from Central Mass: Frankian, Graham, Langford (Worcester), Shelby Bronnes (Athol), Perez (Worcester), Kiesha Jones (Worcester), Cheyenne Jennings (Worcester), Natasha Gonzalez (Milford), Jill Sauvageau (Gardner) and El-Qasem (Rutland). That's the most local players Tessmer has had in her 21 years as WSU coach.

"That's good for recruiting," Tessmer said, "good for fan support, good for the city."

For the second year in a row, WSU is playing its home games at area colleges while construction of its new gym continues.

"It's fine," Frankian said. "I don't have a problem with it because it's cool to play in different gyms. That's the positive way you have to look at it because there are kids who might not get the opportunity to play in these gyms because they're not in our league."

Frankian, who transferred from Assumption to WSU after her freshman year, appreciates that Assumption, Clark, WPI and Nichols have opened their doors to the Lancers. Frankian's family attends each game.

"I love it here," she said. "I love the team, I love Coach. She honestly is a really good coach and an even better person. I think that's really important to have in a coach. She's always going to have your back no matter what. I love playing here. The girls are awesome. It's good to have fun playing basketball."

WSU's new gym should be ready for games by the start of the 2016-17 season when Graham will be a junior.

"I'm really excited for that," Graham said. "It will be a lot easier for extra shooting and to have a place to go after practice."

"It looks awesome," Frankian said of the new gym's design. "I'm really jealous. I'm still going to come back and shoot, I don't care. I live only 10 minutes away."

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