Since the school year is so tightly condensed with classes, training and traveling for the ISU women’s basketball team, summer seems like a nice time to take a break from the busy lifestyle.

But senior guard Jamie Russell is pressing on in the offseason and showing off the work ethic that earned her Missouri Valley Conference Newcomer of the Year at the end of this past season by channeling it into workouts with her team and an internship at Country Financial in Bloomington.

What led you to do an internship this summer?
Because I am pretty much done with my major [in criminal justice] I am doing my internship with Country Financial as a special investigator for insurance fraud. It’s pretty interesting. The kind of work I want to go into is investigative work so what I’m doing at work is doing background checks and investigating insurance fraud.

What does the time frame look like for your typical day? Do you still find time to train for basketball?
I get up at about 6 o’ clock in the morning, and I go to work about 7 to 3:30 p.m. And then right after that we have work outs from 4 p.m. until about 5:30. We come in, we lift weights, we condition, do agility, and also twice a week we will scrimmage for about an hour and then everyday of the week we find time to come in and work on our own fundamentals.
 
With all of that, are you able to find time to take part in typical summer activities like going to the pool?
My summer, I started my internship the Monday right after finals and I’m going all the way until Aug. 10, and I haven’t really had a break. Some of the days I get [my teammates] out and they meet me for lunch, and they always meet me in their swimming suits, and they end up going to my swimming pool at my apartment without me while I have to go back to work. So, I don’t get a lot of free time to do stuff throughout the day, and after I’m done with everything I’m pretty tired so I get my workouts in and I’m pretty much in bed all summer by 9 or 10 o’clock. But on the weekends we hang out, we go to the pool. We have to get some summer tan because it won’t last very long when school starts.

Being an athlete, are you looking forward to the London Olympics that are coming up this month?
Definitely. We’ve all been talking about it quite often. We’re looking forward to it. I’m pretty sure we’ll all get together and definitely be watching it together.