Current Issue
(Fall 2005)
ECE Student Phillips Excels at Books, Basketball
Joleen Phillips had a cryptic message for her parents one Saturday last winter.
Joleen Phillips
"I've got a surprise for you today," the 22-year-old Speed School student told them.
"I thought," recalls her dad Joe Phillips, "what's she got up her sleeve?"
Joleen's surprise turned out to be more than even she expected. The senior in electrical and computer engineering would be in the starting lineup for the first time in her college career as the women's basketball Cardinals took on their arch rivals from the University of Kentucky on Dec. 5.
Although she had been a star on the high school basketball team at Louisville's Presentation Academy, Phillips had spent virtually all of her four years on the team watching games from the bench.
That's because she decided early on that getting a degree was her first priority.
During practices prior to the big game, U of L coach Tom Collen saw in Phillips a potential secret weapon to inspire her lethargic teammates.
"I thought she could be a defensive stopper for us," Collen says. "But I also saw in her the chance to make a statement to the other players that they weren't working hard enough."
"Normally we see her stand up with the team at the beginning of the game and that's it," says Joe Phillips, a 1975 graduate of U of L's College of Business. "She hadn't played but 30 seconds her whole college career. But this time she was out there running with the starters and we flipped out. It was an amazing feeling."
By the time the game was over, everyone was amazed.
Phillips' tenacious defense shut down UK's star Sara Potts, holding the 18-point-a-game-average star to just two points on 1 for 9 shooting. U of L won the game in an upset, 66-49.
"We lost it," her dad says. "We were jumping around shouting like crazy."
After that, Phillips started every game until an ankle injury in February kept her off the court for several weeks.
The soft-spoken Phillips downplays her basketball successes, chalking them up as experiences toward her future success. "It was fun to play on the team and I enjoyed it," she says. "I learned a lot about teamwork, which is something I'll need working on engineering projects. Teamwork, discipline, communication and time management--all these I can carry over into other life experiences."
Phillips says she doubts she'll play basketball this season, concentrating instead on pursuing a joint MBA degree in electrical engineering and business offered by both Speed and U of L's College of Business. "I'm looking forward to hopefully being a manager at a manufacturing plant, maybe," she says. "I'll do anything to get my feet wet."
As a co-op student, Phillips has worked at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio and at the Marathon Ashland Petroleum plant in Ashland, Ky. At the refinery she says she repaired tanks and motors and installed new parts in equipment, among other duties.
"Joleen's confidence on the team tells me that she's going far in whatever she chooses to do," Collen says. "Even though she lacked playing experience, she stepped onto that floor as an intelligent, self-assured young lady."
Her father says she has a strong work ethic and a drive to prove herself. "She's focused ahead, looking forward to the real world, and I think she played those games just to prove to herself that she could do it," he says. "She doesn't want to have regrets in the future; to look back and say 'I wish I had done something."
