Huffman: Not ready to give up basketball

By Erin Leach |Staff Writer|

CSUSB student athlete Kristen Huffman is leaving the Cal State Community this year after two seasons of playing with the women’s basketball team.

Huffman and the other seniors are finding it difficult to part from such a driven, dedicated team.

So far this season the senior forward has played 182 intense minutes of basketball and says she doesn’t regret any of it.

Huffman has put 34 total points on the board for the Coyote women.

A transfer from Humboldt State, Huffman is a sociology major who plans on possibly pursuing a coaching career.

“Over this last summer, I helped coach a freshman team at Saint Francis High School in Sacramento. It really solidified that coaching is the direction I want to go,” said Huffman.

She notes that she loves everything about the sport of basketball.

“I just love it,” she said, “I think if you took my heart out it would be a basketball.

I love the camaraderie of it, the smell of a gym, the sound of a basketball dribbling, the squeak of shoes on the floor, and those games where the gym is packed with fans.”

Huffman plans on moving back to her home town of Sacramento for graduate school at CSU Sacramento.

Looking back on her time here at CSUSB, Huffman recalls that her proudest basketball moment would be  “making the game winning basket against Humboldt State at their house. I started my collegiate career at Humboldt State, so it was sweet revenge.”

She continued “basketball has taught me discipline and has helped to put structure in my life. Within my last four years I have been taught many life lessons.”
“I never regret anything that has happened with basketball because it has shaped me into the Kristen Huffman that I am today.”