This article originally appeared in the April 2024 edition of The Commuter.
It should’ve been a highlight. In a Feb. 7 women’s basketball game against Southwestern Oregon, Linn-Benton sophomore Muriel Jones-Hoisington stole the ball in the last minute of a tight first quarter and broke away towards the other side of the court. As she drove into contact near the basket, she suddenly collapsed. A dead silence fell over the home crowd in Albany.
“I was going in for a layup, it was a fast break,” explained Jones-Hoisington. “While I was trying to do that, my knee just buckled and it felt like it was touching my other knee.”
The injury marked the last play of Jones-Hoisington’s Linn-Benton career. It wasn’t the way the sophomore point guard wanted to end her time as a Roadrunner. “It was definitely tough, because at that moment you just know something’s not good,” said Jones-Hoisington. “Just because this is my first major injury… So you know, it was hard for the first couple of weeks. I was very much in denial. I was like, you know, I’m not hurt, like what?” she laughed.
Jones-Hoisington gave her interview while standing despite a large brace on her injured knee and two crutches. A few minutes before, she had been trying to convince her trainer that she’d be able to drive again in a week, a claim that drew a good laugh. As a competitor, Jones-Hoisington admitted that it was difficult dealing with the injury news.
“You have that optimistic [feeling] like, no, maybe it just tweaked it really bad. And then when you get the MRIs back that’s when it sets in,” she said. Her path to recovery hasn’t been easy – Jones-Hoisington learned that her injury was season-ending on the same day as a Linn-Benton away game, and she added that physical therapy can be “mentally exhausting” at times. “It’s really sore… you’re like, ‘why won’t my quad flex?’ or ‘why can my knee not bend?’”
Still, Jones-Hoisington continued to support her team despite the injury, starting on the night it occurred. “I came out after I calmed myself down and [put ice on my leg] and walked to the bench to watch my teammates finish out the game,” she said. The Beaks needed every bit of support they could that night, emerging with a 52-51 victory over the Lakers.
“Muriel has been a very important member of our women’s basketball program over the last two years,” said head coach Leslie Reinecker. “She was an impact player on the floor as our point guard and a valuable member off the court as well. … Despite the personal challenges she has faced this season through injury, Muriel has handled it with class and remained supportive of her teammates by assuming a different team role. She is well-respected by all who know her and will continue her success in her next phase because of how she approaches things and how she interacts with others.”
A two-year starter for the Beaks, Jones-Hoisington was a top scorer for Linn-Benton in both her freshman and sophomore seasons. “It’s been amazing. I feel like my whole basketball career I’ve always been a leader, as a point guard especially,” she said. “But this year, it’s been a lot. … I am the sophomore now and the point guard – it was definitely a bigger role that I had to step up to. And it was amazing. The girls were amazing to play with. It was really easy to tell them how to fix certain problems that were going through the game and just being able to fluidly work with them.”
Jones-Hoisington’s leadership remained strong despite her injury. But the team still clearly missed having one of their top players on the court. Linn-Benton left the Activities Center on Feb. 7 with a 12-5 record, hoping to make a late-season playoff push. However, they finished the year 16-10, missing the postseason. After a Sweet 16 appearance and a 21-7 record the year before, it was a disappointing end to the season for the Beaks. To make matters worse, Jones-Hoisington’s injury was a major blow to what was already a small sophomore class on the women’s team in 2024.
“That was really tough,” said Jones-Hoisington. “I feel like on our part, that’s what we’ve been battling all year. You have a lot of freshmen coming in, and it’s definitely a different game, from high school ball to college ball. … You have some people stepping up that have never really had to step up.”
“It was difficult but I think we still persevered. Trying to have fun with it, just trying to push through trying to end our season,” she said.
Reinecker added that losing Jones-Hoisington was difficult for the team in more ways than one. “Obviously, losing her for the season had an impact on how the team played and altered some things on the court… But, the biggest impact I believe came from her teammates’ concern for her well-being. It is a difficult thing to watch a friend go through something like this and not be able to do anything about it, but I think both Muriel and the team handled things in the best way possible.”
Although the season didn’t end in the playoff spot the Roadrunner women were hoping for, Jones-Hoisington, along with four other departing sophomores in Brooklynn Walters, Laney Snelling, Hallie Romig, and Cienna Hartle, helped lead Linn-Benton to two consecutive winning seasons and plenty of great memories on and off the court. For Jones-Hoisington, her next stop will be Warner Pacific University in Portland, where she intends to join their nursing program and take a redshirt year before playing healthy again in the 2025-26 season.
“I think this sophomore class is made up of some wonderful people that we were happy also played basketball,” said Reinecker. “Overall, this team had good chemistry and became friends off the court. … I believe these sophomores are going to be successful in all of their next moves and I’m excited to see what they have planned in the future.”
It takes a deep breath or two mid-sentence to read off the full list of T.J. Zimmermann’s career accolades at Linn-Benton. The sophomore forward on the men’s basketball team was named first-team All-NWAC South in 2023 and 2024, a junior college All-American, the NWAC Freshman of the Year, as well as the second all-time leading scorer in school history.
However, his road to get there wasn’t as linear as you might expect.
“To be honest, going into [playing basketball at Linn-Benton], I didn’t really know what things were going to look like for me having not played basketball in two years since my junior year of high school,” said Zimmermann.
Zimmermann, who went to West Albany, played junior college football for the City College of San Francisco right out of high school, lining up at tight end. “My whole goal going there was to play Division I football because that’s what I thought I wanted to be doing,” said Zimmermann.
On paper, it looked like the right decision. Zimmermann and the CCSF Rams went 13-0 in the 2021 regular season, going on to win the California State Championship and be crowned as national champions. “I got a big ring from it, it was awesome,” said Zimmermann.
Zimmermann eventually reached his goal of playing Division I football, accepting a scholarship from the University of New Mexico for the following season. “I accepted and then I attended New Mexico briefly – I was doing some stuff on the football team in the spring. But I ultimately had to come to a tough decision, that it wasn’t what I wanted to be doing with my life, and I had kind of rushed into a decision and just ultimately, it didn’t work out.”
Zimmermann admitted that he had always enjoyed basketball more in high school, but had chased football because he thought that it was what he should be doing. However, after a short stint at New Mexico, he returned home to Albany, considering switching from the gridiron back to the hardwood.
The timing couldn’t have been better.
Zimmermann’s father, Todd, accepted the head coaching job for the Linn-Benton men’s basketball program shortly after. “So yeah, that whole thing basically ended up with me back here and my dad taking that job and me being like, ‘Hey, might as well go back to the sport that I always enjoyed more than football.’ You know, I’m very grateful for how things turned out,” said T.J. Zimmermann.
The Zimmermanns inherited a basketball program that had finished 4-19 the prior year with only two winning seasons since 2012. However, both brought experience and leadership to the table. T.J. Zimmermann’s time as a college football player taught him lessons that carried over into basketball.
“I met a lot of good people [at CCSF]. It was high-level football, and it kind of taught me what a winning culture looks like and what a super successful organization needs to do,” said T.J. Zimmermann.
A culture change was apparent in Todd Zimmermann’s first season as head coach, with the Beaks improving from 4-19 to 15-15 in the 2022-23 season, making the NWAC tournament.
But the journey to turn the program around wasn’t without adversity. Todd Zimmermann dealt with a medical issue late in his first season, forcing him away from his team as they shocked the NWAC with a playoff berth.
“He ended up in a medical coma for I think a full week, maybe seven or eight days,” said T.J. Zimmermann. “It was definitely a scary time. You know, for not just me but for the whole team. As their head coach, everyone had such good relationships with him, but even for me personally, I didn’t know what was gonna happen to him – obviously always thinking he’s gonna be okay no matter what but it was a really tough situation… It was really scary when they first brought him back out of it. He was in constant pain from not moving for a week. … It was like I was talking to my dad, but he wasn’t really there.”
In the Beaks’ first game without their head coach, they lost by 20 to a Chemeketa team they had already beaten earlier in the season. However, needing to win out to make the postseason, Linn-Benton rallied around assistant coach Jalen Schlegel to win three straight to end the regular season and make the playoffs.
Todd Zimmermann made a full recovery, but his second season as head coach wasn’t without adversity, either. “We were kind of a younger team [in the 2023-24 season],” explained T.J. Zimmermann. “We had a lot of up and down moments as a group. And then we also had the ice storm. We were the only team that had to reschedule five games and it put us on a bunch of three-game schedules – three games a week, leading all the way up until the tournament. It made us more tired playing that extra game each week, with less rest and everything like that.”
“We definitely just had to trust in each other – I think that was the biggest thing: try not to lose sight of what we’re trying to accomplish. Try not to collapse on each other,” he said.
Linn-Benton managed to make the playoffs for the second straight year, even ending the 2023-24 season with a winning record, their first since the 2018-19 season. The postseason-clinching memories are among T.J. Zimmermann’s favorites as a Roadrunner.
“I think both times that we clinched the playoffs and being able to celebrate as a group, you know, the first year it was throwing water on Jalen because my dad was sick. This year was throwing water on him because he’s healthy all year. I think those probably were just about the top,” said T.J. Zimmermann. “Knowing all the hard work you put in paid off, everybody’s smiling, laughing, dancing, and throwing water. I would say those are probably the best.”
And through it all, Todd and T.J.’s relationship as coach-player and father-son has remained strong. “Having the opportunity to coach my son has been even better than I could have imagined it being,” said Todd Zimmermann. “These past two years have been so rewarding. To wake up every morning and know that I’m going to get to spend at least two to two-and-a-half hours with my son has been one of the greatest experiences I’ve had the opportunity to take part in.”
T.J. Zimmermann leaves Linn-Benton as part of a talented sophomore class, including Kamana Lapina, Tre Cannon, Kevin Sanchez, Bennet Bos, Sam Myers, Davion Burdette, and Anders Turman – a group that was instrumental in the men’s basketball team’s turnaround as a program.
“This group of sophomores will always have a special place in my heart,” said Todd Zimmermann. “I have been so fortunate in the two seasons I have had here at LB. Last year’s sophomores did such a great job of setting the tone for what being an LB men’s basketball player should look like… establishing the culture for the program.”
As for T.J. Zimmermann, he leaves Linn-Benton as an all-time great of the basketball program. He’s still deciding what to do next, saying he’s ruled out a return to football but is talking to several schools about continuing his basketball career.
He was similarly unsure when he first joined the Beaks after leaving his football career behind back in 2022. But the bold decision ended up working out.
“To be honest, I didn’t have any real set-in-stone expectations coming into LB other than I just wanted to help the team win and have fun. And you know, I’ve done that. It is something, all those accomplishments that I’m very happy with. It’s always a good feeling when hard work pays off.”
