It takes a lot to make the Ohio State women’s basketball team: speed, size, talent and apparently a sense of humor.
Coach Jim Foster and players on the team agree that having a sense of humor helps the team in a variety of ways, including keeping the team loose and relaxed.
“If you don’t have a sense of humor, you’re in the wrong gym,” Foster said in a serious manner.
The players enjoy his humor saying it is mostly in the way he tells his jokes: in a very dry voice, without cracking a smile.
“You can’t imagine that he’s humorous?” center Jantel Lavender asked. “It’s like sarcastic funny … he’ll say something like ‘run after the ball like your running after your boyfriend.'”
Although Lavender doesn’t think people could imagine Foster being funny, he’s plenty aware of his own humor level.
“Well, NBC has called me,” Foster joked. “They’re having problems.”
The players say that most of his humor happens in the quiet moments when you least expect it and it is very entertaining, although sometimes his jokes are too smart.
“He talks about this stuff and you kind of have to think about it,” forward Sarah Schulze said. “We’re like, ‘Can you explain it more?'”
Foster also puts his sense of humor to good use at the beginning of every practice.
“He gives us stories at the beginning of every practice and we’ll stand there for like 15 minutes and try to figure out what’s the point of this story,” Lavender said. “We’ll all look around like … okay?”
The new players on the team have to get used to the coach’s peculiar humor. Some can take it the wrong way at first, even a little too “personally,” guard Brittany Johnson said.
Foster doesn’t limit his humor to the players alone, he also jokes with the coaches as well.
“He’s been with coach [Debbie] Black … for a long time now so he obviously knows a lot about coach Black,” Schulze said. “He’ll say stuff to kind of get under her skin [when she’s scrimmaging] because she gets very defensive … very competitive.”
There seem to be few topics that Foster keeps off-limits when teasing Black, Lavender said.
“[Foster] will say something about her being at St. Joe’s like, ‘That reminds me exactly how you were at St. Joe’s … you never hit a shot,'” Lavender said. “Then she’s like this defensive monger in attack mode.”
Foster uses his humor in such a manner that it helps the team in many different ways, from keeping them loose to giving them better competition in a scrimmage.
Although some are offended at first, the players don’t mind his humor at all and think he’s hilarious.
“[His humor] is just constant,” Lavender said. “Throughout the whole day he’s just kind of silly.”
