Some players lead quietly, calmly, by example.
Then there’s VIU Mariners guard Jamie MacFarlane. She leads by example, too – by playing with fire and desire and intensity.
“It rubs off on everybody…” said Bill McWhinnie, coach of Vancouver Island University’s women’s basketball team. “How hard she plays, how emotional and how vocal she is. It brings people up with her.”
The graduating fifth-year guard isn’t a leading scorer with the Mariners, but she is unequivocally a leader as her first-place team prepares for provincial championships this week (March 3-5) in North Vancouver.
MacFarlane is an intelligent player who communicates well on the court, said her coach, and is often tasked with guarding the opposition’s top perimeter threat.
“Just her effort and her energy and everything …she has so many intangibles that help our program,” McWhinnie said. “We have people that can score. So she doesn’t have to – she does everything else.”
MacFarlane can come up with a big game offensively when need be, but she said it’s most important to her to do “whatever helps the team,” and believes her game is based around good defence.
While it’s true that defence wins basketball games, so does demeanour. MacFarlane is always dialled up. Would it be good for her, sometimes, to try to dial it down a notch?
“I like to play the way that I do. It fires my team up, it fires myself up, it fires my coaches up,” she said.
And that fire has been intrinsically linked with the Mariners women’s basketball program in recent years. The M’s have been contenders for MacFarlane’s entire college career.
Hailing from Prince George, she chose Vancouver Island because she wanted a change.
“I took a chance and it was a good one,” she said.
She’s won a provincial title with the M’s in 2013, and has competed at nationals twice, including last winter at the VIU gym.
The strength of the program, she said, was built by the players who came before her and a coaching staff that cares, and a great sense of “teamship,” as MacFarlane put it.
“We’re all friends and it’s fun to win,” she said.
Winning in playoffs will be more challenging, as opponents will “come in firing,” said MacFarlane.
But none will be more fired up.
“I’ve always played like that,” she said. “I have a lot of passion and that will never go away, I don’t think.”
sports@nanaimobulletin.com
Friday was seniors’ night at the VIU gym. Emotional ceremony after Jamie MacFarlane’s last game on her home court… pic.twitter.com/cFPg6zEBbw
— Greg Sakaki (@BulletinSports) February 28, 2016
