Souhan: Gophers’ Amaya Battle authoring dramatic ending to her college career

When the Gophers women’s basketball team traveled to play Rutgers in New Jersey last weekend, Amaya Battle realized a dream. She also helped her team beat Rutgers.

While in what is known on the East Coast as the Tri-State Area, Battle went to Manhattan to see “Hamilton” on Broadway.

“When you watch the play on Disney, sometimes they just focus on whoever is singing,” Battle said. “When you see it live, you notice all of the other details.”

Which is one way to describe Battle’s career. Pull the camera back, and you’ll be entertained.

Battle describes herself and her teammates as “silly people.” She’s a joyful competitor on a team nearing its goal of returning to the NCAA tournament and making good on the promise of an outstanding recruiting class.

On Thursday, Feb. 12, the Gophers’ senior guard scored a game-high 21 points — while adding six rebounds, two assists, a steal and a block— in her team’s 84-67 win over Nebraska at Williams Arena. The Gophers (19-6, 10-4 Big Ten) have won seven games in a row and are No. 10 in the NET rankings used by the selection committee.

“We’re just all goofy,” Battle said. “There’s never a moment when we don’t want to crack a joke, when we’re not having fun and laughing. That can literally happen in the middle of a game.”

Baseball is known for off-the-cuff humor because there is so little action and so much waiting. Basketball would seem to demand intensity and concentration, but Battle has found that laughs can coexist with leadership.

“I like to have fun no matter what I’m doing, and there’s obviously times where you need to walk in and be more focused than others,” Battle said. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t have joy with whatever you’re doing. I’ve noticed that there are a lot of different types of leadership, and there are lots of different types of leadership on our team, and I think they all work together and balance each other out.”

Battle was one of the centerpieces of former Gophers coach Lindsay Whalen’s best recruiting class in 2022, which was ranked the 10th best in the nation by ESPN.

The stars of that class were local standouts Battle (Hopkins), guard Mara Braun (Wayzata) and forward Nia Holloway (Eden Prairie). They stayed with the program after Whalen was fired and Plitzuweit was hired, and are on the verge of giving the Gophers their first NCAA tournament berth since 2018.

“That would mean a lot,” said Battle, whose older brother, Jamison, also played for the Gophers. “We came in here because we wanted to turn the program around, and every year we’ve made steps toward that. I think going to the tournament is an even bigger step, something that would mean a lot to this program and everybody who’s been a part of it.”

“That’s one thing I really like and appreciate about ‘Hamilton’,” Battle said. “They include a lot of different ethnicities. There’s diversity in the cast, even though that’s not what these people looked like when everything played out in real life.”

After hearing Battle rave about “Hamilton,” I shared my experience.

My wife and I have seen “Hamilton” four times, including once in New York with the original cast. We also saw “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda star in Freestyle Love Supreme, an improvisational hip-hop comedy troupe, in Las Vegas.

My wife finagled an invitation into the cast’s after-party and chatted up Miranda for about 10 minutes, finding him as relaxed and engaging as you would hope.

I’ve seen a lot of plays and comedic acts. I’ve never seen anything that matches “Hamilton” or Freestyle Love Supreme.

One of her favorite songs is the finale, “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story.”