The road to success for the Illinois women’s wheelchair basketball team will be different than last year’s.

The Illini head to Baltimore, Md., today to play in the Brandi Zimmerman Memorial Tournament to open their season -without six core players from last year’s national championship team. They will play four round-robin style games, one on Friday and three on Saturday.

The biggest loss from last year’s roster is player Jen Ruddell, who played on four national championship teams for Illinois in her five years of eligibility. She is the first woman to ever be drafted by a men’s wheelchair basketball team.

“There won’t be another Jen Ruddell,” head coach Mike Frogley said. “Jen is probably considered to be the best in the world right now.”

Still, the women’s season must go on. Frogley is enthusiastic about the challenge.

“Everybody’s thinking that this is the year they can take their shots at U of I, and I can’t wait,” Frogley said. “I can’t wait because I can see the potential in our young women here, and I think, ‘Holy cow, this women’s team we’ve got right now has such an opportunity to become their own niche in the history of this program.'”

With so few veterans on the team, starting point guard Shelley Chaplin has an idea about how the Illini will give opponents a tough time.

“We’re going to be doing a lot of pressing,” Chaplin said. “We’re a really fast team, and I think our press will be one of our biggest assets.”

Co-captain Carlee Hoffman said Frogley is good at whipping the athletes into shape. Having that ability will be critical since the team is not as experienced as it has been in years past.

“I don’t want us to get to the 35th minute and have us run out of gas,” Frogley said.

As a captain, Hoffman is going to be one of the main keys to the team’s success. Hoffman started for the U.S. women’s wheelchair basketball national team in 2006, helping the team win a silver metal in Amsterdam.

“She is big and she’s smart, and she’s got a good outside shot,” Chaplin said. “Defensively, she’s very aggressive, so I think that will be very helpful.”

Also important to the Illini will be starting forwards Arley McNeney and Kathleen O’Kelly-Kennedy. Chaplin believes these two post players will pose major problems for other league teams during the season.

“There’s only one other girl in the league that’s their size, and other than that, they’re going to tower over everybody else,” Chaplin said.

While the team is composed of several world-class players, that fact does not make it easy to have perfect practices with no tension, especially since the team is young.

“I just keep telling the players (they) have to be patient,” Frogley said. “They’ve had adversity already, and that was bad play the first week of practice. They understand the way you deal with adversity is to come together, lean on each other. That’s the only way you survive.”

Frogley wants people to understand that this women’s team is for real. He hopes that message will be sent this weekend in Baltimore.

“We don’t rebuild with our women’s program,” Frogley said. “We reload.”