If you ask Marshfield’s Katie Pritchard to describe her best player, one word quickly comes to mind.
“Lauren is just toughness,” said Pritchard.
The Lady Jays head coach knows Lauren Luebbert is exactly what she wants in her team’s leader.
“She just is she is a competitor,” Pritchard said. “Everything she does on the floor, off the floor. She wants to help lead this team. She is [a player] knowing what it means to be a Marshfield Lady Jay and how huge that is for her.”
Lauren’s love for Lady Jays has grown since her days as an underclassman.
“Sophomore year we didn’t have many seniors,” Lauren said. “I kind of had to fill that leadership role and it was a learning experience. It wasn’t perfect but Coach Pritchard really helped me through that transition.”
Although Lauren considers being a Lady Jay as serious business, she knows it’s important to stay loose.
“My teammates are a lot of fun and we just enjoy each other,” Lauren said. “We just make fun of each other and stuff and it just makes it a lot of fun, but when it is game time we know to lock in.”
The Lady Jays brought that mindset to the Nashville Shootout. It was the first time this Marshfield team played beyond the state of Missouri.
“We knew we were going to play several Division I players and for us, it was just go out there and see what we can do,” Pritchard said. “The coolest thing is that we never backed down in every single game and we proved we belong with some of the best and as a team, we can compete with anyone.”
Soon, Lauren will experience that type of competition all the time as she goes on to ball at the collegiate level.
“My favorite basketball memory to date is committing to Washburn,” Lauren said. “Just because it has been my dream since I was a little girl to play college sports. Everybody else in my family has, my brothers played college sports. And my parents so I was the last one.”
It was also a proud moment for Pritchard, one of Drury’s all-time best players, even though Lauren chose to go down her own path.
“Lauren and I had several conversations about you know fit, what was the best place for her you know,” Pritchard said. “Sometimes you have an idea of where you want to be and you go to those schools and maybe it’s not the right fit. It’s just a gut thing so you know she really thought about it hard and took in all the possibilities and made the best decision for her.”
Washburn is a place where she feels right at home, just as she does Marshfield.
