Editor’s Note: Emma is an Electronic Journalism Arts student at Lyndon State College. This article is part of a collaboration with Basement Medicine to better represent our unified community.

Over Thanksgiving break, Mikayla Hodge topped the 1,000-point mark in her basketball career after leading the Lyndon State basketball team past Vermont Technical College. Hodge converted a layup off of a feed from Meagan Johnson with under a minute remaining to put her over the 1,000-point line. Hodge finished the game with 21 points, 15 rebounds, four steals and four blocked shots.

Hodge may have ended the game on a high note, but it’s not how it started. “Throughout the whole game, I just wasn’t having a good game and I was pretty upset because my whole family was watching.”

She says nothing was going her way, which made her frustrated. But the majority of her points were scored in the fourth quarter, which was when her magic moment happened. “I had a lot of mixed emotions . . . but I was excited and overwhelmed.”

Hodge says she never thought she’d be close to getting 1,000 points let alone accomplishing it. “In high school, I was on the team for three years and wasn’t close to my 1,000 so it wasn’t really on my mind.”

She says it was a goal she kept in mind, but her biggest goal she had hoped to accomplish in her collegiate career was getting her 1,000 rebounds. She says, “I’m hoping to create that milestone too.” She says she started to get close to reaching her 1,000-point was towards the end of last season. “I was 49 points away exactly so I would keep checking, I’m not the one who keeps looking at it but I would just look at it to see how many points I had left.”

Hodge is a senior in the Sports Management department and was named one of the captains of the team. “I’ve always thought of myself as a team leader and in high school I was team captain in lacrosse, so I had a lot of roles there.” She says she tries to be a role model and set an example for her teammates.

As far as being a senior, Hodge says she’s excited. “The season has been going fairly well in the last two years that Sean Lynch has been here.” She says they are moving in the right direction since increasing their wins to 11 games last year. “We still have 25 games to go and when the last game comes it’ll be upsetting but I’m excited for the future.”

Hodge was also named North Atlantic Conference Women’s Basketball Player of the Week for the week ending Dec. 3.