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The soft-spoken senior captain for Cornerstone’s basketball team will bid farewell along with many other graduates this May. Overbeek said the moment will be bittersweet when it comes to her last game.

“I’ll probably cry just because my parents will be crying,” Overbeek said. “It’s sad to have something so good end.”

Overbeek, a business management major, said she does not know what the next step in her career will be, however she hopes to one day become “an athletic director, but I’ve got to work my way up to that.”

Overbeek has been working her way up since childhood, where her passion for basketball began.

“I have an older brother and parents [who] played,” she said. “So they taught it to us.”

In fifth grade, Overbeek said her parents put her on a non-competitive team in Zeeland “just for kids,” she said. “We played a lot of teams.”

Overbeek also said that two of her current teammates, Danielle Kraai and Jenna Plewes, played against each other while her mom coached the young team.

“Me and Dani were on the same team, and Jenna’s team was always the team to beat,” Overbeek said.

In Holland Christian High School, her practice from middle school paid off. She played on their varsity team all four years, and was selected twice in the O.K. Gold All-Conference. She was also named one of the top 100 players in the Detroit Free Press. Overbeek said she owes most of her achievements to her high school coach.

“Because I had him all four years, he saw that I had a lot of potential,” she said. “He pushed me a lot. He would always yell at me if I did something wrong and always challenged me to be the first one to finish plays and shoot baskets.”

“He’d always tell me what to do to get better.”

In 2004, Overbeek began to look at colleges, including Calvin and Hope, while finishing her senior year.

“I watched the [Cornerstone] men’s team a lot growing up,” she said. “I never thought about coming here. But I realized it was close to home, small, and I knew I could play here. I also got some scholarships, so all those combined helped me in my decision.”

Overbeek said one of her favorite years at CU was 2005.

“My sophomore year we finished third in the conference,” she said. “We had to play Aquinas in the second round of the tournament, and we won.

“We were the underdogs, and we won at Aquinas on their court.”

That year, the women’s team continued from the championship tournament to nationals, where their victorious streak continued.

“Winning that game was big. We beat Davenport at Davenport’s [campus], and they were undefeated,” she said. “So it was fun to beat them. Winning the big games were most memorable.”

Speaking of Davenport, Overbeek also commented about their recent loss against the university 79-74, where the team fell behind 20 points before the second half and worked up to a tie, before losing by just a couple points.

“If we hadn’t gotten down by so much, we would’ve outscored them the rest of the way,” she said. “We missed a lot of free throws.”

This is why Overbeek also said she hopes to play Davenport in the upcoming finals.

“We beat them before by 15, and they only beat us by four,” she said. “We feel like we’re better.”

When it comes to a team’s players, head coach Carla Fles would categorize Overbeek as one of the key athletes on the team.

“In many games, she has come up with some clutch plays which was usually hitting a big basket,” Fles said. “She has been one of our floor leaders throughout her junior and senior years and has delivered.”

“One word to describe her would be ‘steady,’” Fles said.

As Overbeek’s graduation day draws closer, she said she hopes the team continues its winning record since the team has won 20 games all four years Overbeek has attended Cornerstone. “We always finish within the top four in the conference,” she said.

After all the achievements Overbeek assisted with in the past four years, in basketball retirement she looks forward to skiing, boating, tubing and eating pizza and steak “all the time.”

“It’s been a really good four years,” she said. “My coach and my parents have been very supportive, and I’ll be sad to leave.”