2019-20 Georgia Tech Everyday Champions Issue #3

The correlation between the coach’s consistency of message and the team’s

willingness to buy in so quickly and completely. “She has never changed. She has never once raised her voice. She always says we just have to get in the gym and get better,” Fletcher said. “There’s been times that I’ve felt that we needed to be gotten after, but she’s always just come in and reassured us. I feel that is something that we all take to heart. She always lets us know that at the end of the day, basketball is just a game. She wants to help us grow as people. We’ll just get back to practice and get back to work.” It’s not that the losses don’t hurt. They do, especially to someone as unabashedly competitive as Fortner. But she refuses to let a loss drag her or her team down. The Jackets believe a season’s worth of this positivity will pay off come postseason. “It’s extremely important to keep that because I don’t want us to get tight if things start getting rough and I don’t think she wants that either,” said Fletcher. “That’s why she and the coaching staff try to keep everything free so we don’t feel an immense amount of pressure. They always say,

‘We don’t dwell on the past. We look towards the future and the present.’ You can definitely tell that she is used to winning, the way that she coaches. She holds us to a higher standard. Even when we are playing well she always says, ‘There’s always more work to do.’” “I feel like she has given us more confidence, and we feel it on the court,” said Cubaj. “We have one goal and the one goal is the NCAA Tournament. We want to reach that goal this year.”

Fortner hadn’t been on the sideline in seven years when she joined the Jackets, and she had to find replacements for two of their top players from the previous season.

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