Featured Testimonial About Creighton University
The departure time out of Omaha had been pushed back so drastically that the Creighton women’s basketball team was going to miss its connecting flight. And there was a game in Providence, R.I., the next day.
Uh-oh.
All eyes turned toward Jenny Vickers, BA'03.
There certainly can be some hectic and chaotic challenges on the job for Vickers, who has, among other duties, handled the program’s travel logistics for 11 years as the Bluejays’ director of operations.
That mad scramble before a Providence road trip at Eppley Airfield was one of those wild moments. There was the time the Jays’ plane needed mechanical work and they got stuck for a couple days on Bimini, a small island group between Miami and The Bahamas. And, here recently, it was quite busy for Vickers during the first 24 to 48 hours after the Selection Show on Sunday, March 18, when Creighton learned it’ll be a No. 7 seed and open the NCAA tournament Thursday against No. 10 seed UNLV in Los Angeles.
“But I'll tell you, even though those are the hard parts of my job, having the staff that we have and the players that we have makes it so much better when things don't go your way,” Vickers said. “They’re patient. Nobody’s mad. Nobody’s stressed, except me — I’m stressed. But I've been doing it a long time and you kind of get used to it.”
If the Jays keep winning, Vickers probably won’t be able to sit back and relax for a while. She’s completely fine with that.
Creighton is looking to build on its memorable season with another historic NCAA Tournament run just two years removed from its first-ever Elite Eight appearance. The Jays are 25-5 and have been ranked in the Top 25 for 15 straight weeks.
As a former Creighton player (1999-2002) and former Bluejay assistant coach (2006-2013), Vickers has contributed to the program’s success and growth over the years — and yet she still finds herself marveling at how far the Jays have come. We asked her a few questions about her college playing days, the coaching staff’s camaraderie and the defining elements of Creighton’s culture.
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A coach’s quote in a 2003 media guide describes you as a player. It says Jenny (Burns) is the one that “the average fan notices the least,” who “doesn’t care about points, touches or minutes” but helps the team succeed. Sound accurate?
Yeah, that sounds like me. That pretty much embodies, I think, the way I played. And it was fun to play. We joke now about how I was a 5-10 post player who didn’t shoot, who didn’t try to score. I played with Dayna Finch (Weltmer), BA'04, and Christy Neneman, BA'04, and Laura Spanheimer (Dechant), BS'05, DPT'08, and all these really, really good players. So I found my role. It took me a little bit my freshman year. I maybe thought I could score more than I could and probably took shots I shouldn't have taken. I figured it out. Whenever you can kind of feel good in your role, that brings happiness. And I've found that in my job now, and I think that was a big part of when I was a player, too. It was a role, kind of behind the scenes, and maybe it's a little bit like what I'm still doing now.
The Jays earned an NCAA Tournament berth in 2002 during your junior year. At the time, it was the program’s first appearance in eight years. What was that like to experience?
I mean, it was thrilling. When we were in the Missouri Valley Conference, it came down to winning the tournament. That's the way it was pretty much every year, winning three games in three days. There were so many years where you came close, but not all the way. So making the NCAA Tournament, it was obviously super exciting. I look back at how far we've come and especially just recently, it's just cool that our players have the opportunity to compete against the best teams every year.
The Jays have played in five of the last seven NCAA Tournaments, including three straight. What have you seen change over the years?
I look at athletic training and strength and conditioning and how those areas have grown. There’s so much more. The year-round training, and the areas of recovery, hydration, nutrition. Our student-athletes really take advantage of that and they work extremely hard.
It's just so much different, but I’ll point out that a lot of it's still the same, too. Creighton is still Creighton. It's still all about the people. It's family. My job has kept me more connected to the alumni probably than maybe I otherwise wouldn't have been, just because we coordinate a lot of events with alumni, and so it's easy to stay in touch that way. And they say the same thing.
It is notable that there are three Creighton alumnae on staff as assistant coaches, Carli Berger, BS'14, MS'16, Chevelle Saunsoci, BA'10, and Jaylyn Agnew, BSBA'18, MS'20. Plus, coach Jim Flanery, BA'87. And program advisor Connie Yori, BA'86.
That’s a testament to Flan, that people who played for him want to work for him. He's the same way with our student-athletes as he is with his staff, in terms of just understanding work-life balance, and that you have a life outside of the lines of the basketball court.
As a staff, we all get along really well. Obviously we have a lot of history together. We can joke around and have fun, and there's no egos. Everybody's just trying to help each other. Everybody's trying to win. It's not about me or her, and no one's taking credit. There’s so much collaboration and it’s all led to great continuity on the staff. I can't imagine working for anybody better for the last 20 years.”
So… how did you ended up sorting out the nightmare travel scenario before that one Providence game?
We had like 25 of us. We had to figure out how to get to Providence in that day. You can’t get 25 seats on one flight. So we had four student-athletes and one coach go on this flight, and another group go on another flight. I was just splitting up the group and getting everybody there. It ended up that some people flew into Boston and had to drive from there — I think it was some of coaches who had to drive. They didn't even get in until Saturday morning, a few hours before the game. The team arrived at 1 a.m. in Providence after being split all apart and going their own ways. Some people through Charlotte, some people through all these different cities. And then we have the game that next afternoon. And we won!
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While you're cheering for the Creighton men's and women's basketball teams in March, keep track of all the pregame events, team sendoffs and watch parties for Bluejay alumni and friends by bookmarking our Athletics Events page.
