Eastern women’s basketball head coach Brady Sallee tried to beat Ellen Canale.

But the senior guard is just too tough.

“For a while it seemed like every position I was signing was hers, but she never got beat out and that’s just who she is,” Sallee said about Canale. “Her willingness to just not accept ever getting beat has been the biggest thing that she’s brought to our program. She would never let me beat her, and I tried to bring in kids that would shut her down.”

Canale will play her last regular season home game at Eastern Saturday at 3 p.m. She said she takes pride in never giving up and never settling for anything less than winning.

“(Sallee) and I have had a million conversations where he would say he’s got a new guard coming in and that I had better get better,” Canale said. “He really challenged me. He would say ‘You have to be that much better, stronger, work harder’ to beat these girls out.”

Canale has seen her numbers rise in some way each year of her career. She never averaged more than seven points per game in a season before this year, where she is second on the team with an average of 10.5 points per game.

Senior forward Rachel Galligan said Canale’s ability to get better in so many aspects throughout her career is what is most impressive.

“(Sallee) would tell her people were better than her and more athletic and one summer she was in the gym non-stop working and shooting non-stop and she’s evolved,” Galligan said. “She’s changed every year and proved she’s not just one-dimensional when maybe she was her freshman year.”

Canale credits her improvement over the years to her competitive nature.

“When someone puts a challenge in front of me I just think ‘I better do the job,'” she said. “I took (Sallee’s challenges) as a personal motivation. I just decided ‘No. He’s not right.’ That’s just the kind of person I am.”

Canale is well known by her teammates and coaches for her intensity and defensive ability. Most of the time, she is assigned to guard Eastern opponents’ best offensive player, and – more often than not – she gets the job done.

Sallee said the intensity she brings really aids the team and the amount of emotion she brings in whatever she is doing helps him gauge the mood of the team.

“Ellen is our pulse, that’s who she is,” Sallee said. “I can look at her and tell the mood of the whole team. When I’m getting on them in practice, most of the time I make sure and see her reaction because now I know how the rest of the team is reacting to it.”

Canale said she is proud of being a part of the turnaround that saw the Panthers go from winning 10 games her freshman season to 19 already this year. She said it took a lot of hard work, but it made her better as an individual.

“It made me the kind of person where now I know I can overcome a lot of things,” she said. “As a group we overcame all the obstacles and people who said we couldn’t do it and we weren’t good enough. We kept going and we’re all stronger people because of it.”

Canale will graduate this spring with a degree in communication studies and public relations with a business minor. She said she has not figured out what she is going to do after graduation yet.

“My parents have always told me that my problem is I love too many things,” she said. “So I have no idea what I’m doing. Maybe I’ll be a coach. You never know. I’m open to everything and excited about everything. Who knows? Maybe one day I’ll be ruling the world.”

Collin Whitchurch can be reached at 581-7944 or cfwhitchurch@eiu.edu.

Senior guard Ellen Canale (File photo/The Daily Eastern News)

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