Last Saturday, Dec. 7, Grinnell’s men’s basketball team suffered their first defeat of the season against nationally ranked St. Norbert College, losing narrowly in overtime. In one of their final leading moments of the second half, co-captain Cody Olson ’14 sank a much-needed three-pointer but it was unable to push the team to victory. Olson, a psychology major, hopes to attend graduate school at University of Iowa after graduation.
When did you start playing basketball?
I started playing in fourth grade, just with some of my friends in the neighborhood.
Are you involved with any other sports?
I played baseball most of my life and track and a bunch of different sports, but I got kind of just worn out from everything, so I decided to just keep playing my favorite sport.
What do you like about basketball most?
Growing up, most of my best friends played basketball, so that’s kind of how I got started, how I got hooked on it. I came here to play the type of system Grinnell plays, which is just laidback, fun basketball with a lot of scoring.
What is your favorite part about the team?
Definitely hanging out with all the guys off the court, lifting weights, and I steam [in the steamroom] with all my teammates. We act like a family all the time. Just having somebody to say, “What’s up?” to you.
What are you looking forward to about this season?
I’m really excited to see what all the freshmen can do. We had a lot of seniors last year that left, and we didn’t really know what was going to happen this year, how the freshmen were going to react. So far, they have been really talented and they are mixing with the rest of the team really well. We’re all becoming really close.
Do you have any pre-game or post-game rituals?
Usually, before the game, me and Luke [Yeager ’15] or someone play [NBA] 2k14 on Xbox. Maybe play some football before, just throw a ball around and hang out for a few hours before the game—get relaxed.
In an ideal world, what would you want to do with your psychology degree?
I think something I would most enjoy is sport psychology, but I feel like I would also enjoy being a psychologist or a psychiatrist. Just trying to help people out, doing social work. I think that’s what I would probably enjoy most.
Do you plan to play basketball after college?
No, not really [only] a little bit, every once in a while. I definitely want to play baseball after college—get onto a club team. I want to start lifting a lot of weights.
What is your favorite class that you’ve taken at Grinnell?
I took a seminar on sustainable development last semester; it was for GDS [Global Development Studies]. It’s definitely the hardest class I’ve taken here, there was a lot of discussion [and] tons of reading. There was a lot of applicable stuff to the real world and concerned real life problems, which I liked a lot. Everyone in the class was really smart. They were all really well-spoken and that made the class a lot better, hearing other perspectives. One of my other favorite classes was Behavior Analysis with my advisor, [David] Lopatto. My favorite part of that class was Skinnerian behavior stuff, which really influenced me to want to pursue psychology more. I knew that obviously it wasn’t completely true, but the idea that you could shape someone from when they’re born into anything they want … that sparked an interest in me.
