Locked On Women’s Basketball: Maddy Westbeld tells us what she learned in time away from Notre Dame

First, they discussed how Westbeld has been preparing to return to basketball, both physically and mentally. Particularly because this had been a lingering injury for Westbeld, she touched on how she had been navigating playing with pain, and how it feels to be relatively pain free now:

“Obviously there’s many, many physical things that I gotta do every day to just stay ready, get ready and get prepared for being back on the court, which I am now, thankfully,” Westbeld explained. “Then also just preparing for what’s next in my career. But honestly, the main challenge that I encounter every day, and what I’m really trying to overcome, is that mental side of it. And I think that a lot of people will kind of agree with me when I say that the mental part of any injury, of any coming back process is always, always the most prevalent. And so, obviously, I do my work every day, and I get in the gym, I do my lists and rehab and recovery, you name it, but the discipline in my mind is really something that I take pride in. And so just getting up, doing my meditation, doing things where you can pick a side … there’s a lot of things like, ‘why is this happening to me?’ Or is ‘how is this happening for me?’ And so just trying to intentionally choose that every day, yeah. So for me, that’s really important to me, and that’s the biggest part of the work in this process.”

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“To be honest, I’ve played injured on my foot for a long time,” Westbeld continued. “I’ve played in pain for years, for two, three years, and so I just had surgery. And to be honest, … I had been injured for a while now, and so [I’m] not looking at it as an injury, but looking at it as [an] ‘I’m finally healed now.’ And just having that confidence that I had in the doctor who performed it, having confidence in the staff who was helping me along the way with my rehab, and then also just having confidence in myself and knowing my body, knowing my mind, what it can handle, understanding that if the physical part is healed, then the only thing that’s stopping me is my mental. And so getting back on the court, it’s just learning that confidence and also just gaining reps. … every day I feel like I’m getting better, I’m getting stronger. There’s something today that I won’t be able to do or that I wasn’t able to do yesterday. So it’s really exciting every day, getting to go to practice and seeing what new things that I can accomplish.”

Later on, Megdal and Westbeld talked about how much the women’s basketball space has changed since Westbeld started playing the sport. Westbeld’s older sister, Kathryn Westbeld, played for the Fighting Irish from 2014 to 2018, and until recently had played professionally overseas. Maddy reflected on the differences between the NCAA she is experiencing, and the NCAA she watched her sister play through:

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“I watched my sister go through an entire career where … she wasn’t paid, and there were a lot of things where it was a struggle, and especially as a regular college student,” Westbeld said. “Notre Dame does things differently than any other college around the world in terms of athletics, [in] which every athlete is treated just like a student. And that’s a beautiful thing about Notre Dame. And especially [with] the things that I’ve been able to receive … I think it provides me with a better perspective. Seeing both sides of it and understanding the privilege and the blessing that it is, that I have to take advantage of this opportunity. So for me, it’s just having that recognition of what it could have been like, and then also completely taking advantage of the fact that I’m in it right now. So let me do everything that I can to just take full advantage.”

Tune in to hear more from Westbeld about Notre Dame’s high flying season so far, more about her rehab process and managing an injury as a college player, and more. Make sure to subscribe to the Locked On Women’s Basketball podcast to keep learning about the WNBA, women’s college basketball, basketball history and much more!