Leading the Charge

By John Rohde

Christmas was four days away and members of the Oklahoma women's basketball team were anything but merry.

The Sooners returned home following a 71-64 loss at Arkansas and their season record had slipped to 5-5. The last time OU head coach Sherri Coale had a .500 record through 10 games was the 1998-99 season, which also happened to be the last time her team didn't get an invite to the NCAA Tournament.

A 15-year streak of advancing to the tournament loomed over the 2014-15 Sooners, who had lost twice in the Paradise Jam Tournament in the Virgin Islands and twice more in a span of one week in far less tropical Little Rock, Ark.

OU's next game was nine days away on Dec. 30 against Yale, which would be the Sooners' first home game since Nov. 21.

Though growing pains were anticipated, playing .500 ball just wasn't cutting it and Coale's squad obviously had some things to figure out during Christmas break. It was at that time when senior guard Sharane Campbell-Olds bared her soul in front of five wide-eyed freshmen and several teammates who thought they knew her.

Sharane Campbell-Olds (far right), from Spencer, Okla., is extremely close with her family.

“I just opened up and was honest with everyone,” Campbell-Olds calmly explained.

The selfless act was particularly impressive because introverts normally aren't so courageous.

“That's the first time she laid down her armor for us,” redshirt junior forward Kaylon Williams said of Campbell-Olds. “She was really, really vulnerable for us. A lot of us had never seen her that way. She told us, 'I'm human. I make mistakes. I don't want y'all to chastise me for making mistakes because I'm not going to chastise y'all.' She told us straight up that it's hard being the only senior and having the position as a leader and we were like, 'What do we need to do to help you?' I think that was a really big turning point in our season. We just decided we were going to make this season the way we wanted it to go.”

Campbell-Olds bravely admitting her flaws. Soon the entire team also admitted theirs.

"Sharane's willingness to stay 'real' has kept our team growing."
Head Coach Sherri Coale

“It was her willingness to be vulnerable that most glued our team together,” Coale said. “Even though you spend all that time together lifting and practicing, you still might not know somebody on your own team. Her willingness to say 'This is who I am. I'm not always confident. I'm not always as good as I want to be.' To share that with our team made everybody (exhale) and go, 'OK, good. I don't have to be perfect, either.' That was sort of the genesis of who we started to become as a team.”

This all didn't happen in one meeting. It came with a steady flow of communication between players.

“It began as one pow-wow, but it continued with a series of sincere acts that kept occurring,” Coale said. “There are a lot of years you have a 'Come-to-Jesus' moment. Then it's easy to go, 'Whew. OK, we got that over with.' And then your skin kind of grows back over that and from there maybe you want to do great things, maybe you don't. It could happen a million different ways. The teams that really have something special are willing to leave that open and not let the skin grow back over it. Sharane's willingness to stay 'real' has kept our team growing.”

Campbell-Olds had gone from nary a word to full disclosure with teammates. “At all those meetings, Sharane was one of those head honchos leading them,” junior guard Nicole Kornet said. “She says what she wants to say. She's not afraid to share.”

Coale said Campbell-Olds “has always been a bit of a loner. She keeps to herself quite a bit. She never separates herself from a group, but she's also not one of those people who hangs around with 10 friends.”

Despite having the Big 12's youngest roster, the no longer uptight Sooners promptly reeled off eight straight victories and went 15-6 the remainder of the way to secure the program's 16^th consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance, the nation's sixth-longest active streak.

Sharane Campbell married high school sweetheart Terence Olds on July 11, 2014. She now goes by Campbell-Olds.

Picked to finish fifth in the Big 12 preseason poll, OU instead started out conference play 7-0 and comfortably finished as league runner-up with a 13-5 record, four games ahead of a four-way tie for third place among TCU, Oklahoma State, Iowa State and preseason favorite Texas at 9-9.

It was an uninhibited Campbell-Olds who screamed in celebration during the Sooners' biggest Big 12 moment this season, a 68-64 upset over No. 3 Baylor on Feb. 25 at Lloyd Noble Center, where she had 15 points, nine rebounds and one blocked shot. It was the first time anyone on the OU roster had beaten the Lady Bears, who had won every meeting against the Sooners since the 2010 Big 12 Tournament.

As the lone returning senior from last year's squad, Campbell-Olds knew she would have to be the team leader, a challenging role for someone so quiet. (Guard Whitney Ritchie is a first-year senior who joined the basketball team after four years as a standout tennis player with the Sooners.)

There were no concerns about Campbell-Olds putting in the necessary time during the off-season. “She was the best player in the gym from the day last season ended to sometime in the fall,” Coale said. “Every day. It wasn't close.”

As a freshman in 2011-12, she was named to the Big 12 All-Freshman team and won the conference's Sixth Man Award. As a sophomore, she was selected as the team's defensive player of the year. As a junior, she earned honorable mention All-Big 12, was third in conference play in free-throw percentage (.874) and became the program's 30^th 1,000-point career scorer.

As this season evolved, Campbell-Olds learned she wasn't required to light up the scoreboard. “Coach said she didn't need me to be the leading scorer for the team to be successful,” Campbell-Olds said. “There were other things I could do that would lead to other people's success.”

Her sacrifices this season can be found in her career stats. Campbell-Olds averaged 9.0 points and 3.2 rebounds as a freshman; 10.0 points and 4.3 rebounds as a sophomore; and 12.6 points and 5.4 rebounds as a junior. As a senior, her scoring has dipped back to 9.5 points, but her rebounding has remained steady at 5.5 per game and her assists are at a career-high 56.

“She has grown exponentially in her ability to lead,” Coale said of Campbell-Olds. “She's gotten more comfortable in one-on-one dialogue with her teammates, gotten braver in being authentic with the team around her. She has found special and unique ways to motivate younger players and to teach them from the road that she traveled. The difference between her as a freshman and senior is night and day. Here willingness to do everything right in practice from start to finish, her engagement, her marriage, her confidence, the breadth of her skill set, just night and day.”

Campbell added a hyphen to her last name last summer when she married high school sweetheart Terence Olds on July 11, 2014. Olds is a former standout running back/linebacker at Star Spencer High School, who helped the Bobcats win the 2009 Class 4A state title. He signed last month to play football at Southern Nazarene and is studying pre-engineering. Olds and Campbell dated in high school. The couple's decision to get married came as no surprise to teammates.

“I remember when they were dating my freshman year,” Williams said. “It's really cool seeing 'Campbell-Olds' on the back of her jersey now.”

Coale said she met Olds during Campbell's junior year at Star Spencer.

“Ever since I stepped foot on this campus, she's talked about Terence,” Kornet said. “She's a homebody who just loves her family.”

Campbell-Olds is OU's lone four-year senior.

The 22-year-old Williams actually is older than Campbell-Olds, who turns 22 in April.

“She doesn't act like a 21-year-old. She's like the mother of our team. It didn't help that now she's married,” Williams said with a laugh. “She's like a really old woman to us. She takes care of us like we are her children.”

Even when she left for Norman on the heels of being named 2011 Player of the Year her senior season, Campbell-Olds has always been there for family. While Campbell-Olds was preparing for her freshman season with the Sooners, her 5-month-old nephew, Kuron, died in his sleep of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) in October, 2011. Campbell-Olds handled the funeral arrangements and returned home almost every night to comfort family members, particularly sister Renee, who was Kuron's mother. Campbell-Olds also became involved in the fight against SIDS through her research and helped raise awareness.

Coale's favorite trait of Campbell-Olds?

“Her respectful nature,” Coale said. “She is respectful of all people, all situations, all circumstances. She is really one of those individuals who puts other people first – always. Almost to a fault, she expects the most from herself. She sometimes has unfair expectations of herself. Not necessarily to be perfect, but to do things that experience hasn't prepared her yet to do. I think part of that comes from the role she has played in her family. She has always been the caretaker. She's the old soul who keeps everything moving. She did all this light years before she should have been able to, and I love that high standard she holds herself to, those with high expectancy who demand a lot from themselves.”

Williams' favorite trait?

“Probably how big her heart is,” Williams said. “I know she's really big on family. She treats us like she treats her whole family. She cheers for us beyond the things we do on the court.”

Kornet's favorite trait?

"Her heart is huge. She's really made a big impact. I'm definitely going to miss her next year."
Teammate Nicole Kornet

“Her mindset and her leadership style. The way she's handled herself,” Kornet said. “She's kind of put me under her wing. I'm being groomed to play the 4 spot and she's helped me so much. She gives me all these tips and advice. Her heart is huge. She's really made a big impact. I'm definitely going to miss her next year.”

Campbell-Olds will leave with the program's remarkable streak of NCAA appearances still intact at 16 straight. The No. 5-seeded Sooners will face No. 12-seeded Quinnipiac at 3 p.m. Saturday in Stanford, Calif. With a win, OU would face the winner of the Stanford-Cal State Northridge first-round game on Monday.

Campbell-Olds, Williams, Kornet and redshirt sophomore guard Maddie Manning were on the 2012-13 Sooners team that defeated Central Michigan and UCLA in Columbus, Ohio, to earn a trip to the Oklahoma City Regional at Chesapeake Energy Arena, where the season ended with a Sweet 16 loss to Tennessee. This weekend offers OU the same potential. Win twice at Stanford and the Sooners will make another regional appearance just 22 miles from home at The Peake.

lattin fans

“We've all had a glimpse of that as freshmen and sophomores, what it's like to come back home,” Williams said of the 2013 appearance. “It was the coolest thing. Describing that to our freshmen, they're really excited to get that done.”

Campbell-Olds has begun posting #WINandGOHOME on her Twitter account. The senior who barely uttered a word as a freshman now delivers her message loud and clear.

“Win and go home,” Campbell-Olds said twice, her voice becoming louder the second time around.

About John Rohde

John Rohde is a respected name on the Oklahoma sports scene and will provide regular features for SoonerSports.com. Voted Oklahoma Sportswriter of the Year five times, Rohde has covered OU football and basketball, the Oklahoma City Thunder, OKC/New Orleans Hornets, Dallas Cowboys, Texas Rangers, the Final Four, Masters and PGA Tour. He spent over 26 years for The Oklahoman, serving as a columnist and beat writer. He can be heard on 107.7 The Franchise, the flagship station for OU Athletics weekdays from 5:30-9 a.m.