Believe in them or not, most people have superstitions. Especially in sports, where games are so dependent on one’s mental focus and strength. 
“Always, every athlete that I’ve known has some sort of superstition,” redshirt sophomore forward Erin Boley said. ”I think it’s just a part of being an athlete. You get caught up in that competitiveness and wanting to win, and so it seems like every little thing that you do has to be geared towards that and sometimes it’s superstition.” 
On the Oregon women’s basketball team, not every athlete believes in superstitions. But for those who do, these routine-like practices come in the forms of music, practice shots, hair ties, hair styles and even pregame cleansing.
For Boley, the 6-foot-2 forward, not only does she have to wear the same hair style each game, but she also has to get in a perfect bucket before playing.
“I get about the same amount of shots up before every game,” Boley said. “I always have to make a shot before I leave the court before the game or at the half.”
So far in the NCAA Tournament, Lydia Giomi has worn two thin white hair ties on the wrist of her right arm. She doesn’t take them off and doesn’t even consider using them when she needs to put her hair up. She sees the ties as something she has to wear.
Before every game, redshirt sophomore Morgan Yaeger plugs in her headphones and pushes play on a pregame playlist consisting of the same 20 songs all season. Usually, she only gets through about four or five songs, which feature a variety of both pump-up jams and soothing songs.
Power forward Ruthy Hebard said before every game she has to take a shower in either the team’s locker room or at the hotel. Even if she’s showered the night prior and after practice, she still feels the need to rinse off one final time before tip-off.
“I don’t know why I do it,” she said. “I like to imagine that I shower off the stress and I pray in the shower to be ready and clean for a new start kind of focus.”
Sometimes superstitions even spur from winning streaks or good performances.
For instance, Hebard decided to ditch her signature braids and instead sport her natural hair in anticipation for Oregon’s matchup against Mississippi State. She said a coach pointed out that when Oregon beat Mississippi State in December, she was wearing her natural hair.
Sophomore forward Satou Sabally painted her nails bright red before for the NCAA Tournament. She said because Oregon’s been winning its games thus far she doesn’t plan on changing the color anytime soon.
Whether the amount of pre-game songs or style of game-day hair, no one on the Ducks’ squad quite believes in the power of superstitions more than head coach Kelly Graves. In fact, when he was coaching Gonzaga’s women’s basketball team in the early 2000s, he legitimately considered seeing a trained exorcist in order to cure his pregame anxiety. 
But at the bottom of it all, most athletes and coaches understand that superstition only runs so deep.
“When you get to this level, you know that it has nothing to do with how you’re wearing your hair or what you’re wearing,” Boley said. “It has to do with how prepared you are when you come out and play. At this point, we have routines that we stick to, but also we know that we are the ultimate cause of a loss or a bad game.”
Follow Maggie Vanoni on Twitter @maggie_vanoni

Gallery • 2 Photos

Oregon Ducks forward Satou Sabally (0) moves past a defender. Oregon Ducks women’s basketball takes on South Dakota State University at the Moda Center in Portland, Ore. on March 29, 2019. (Devin Roux/Emerald)