ONTONAGON -- College basketball teams have begun their preseason workouts with regular season games scheduled for next month.
Finlandia's Women's team will not have its leading scorer back this season, but the reasons are not your normal set of circumstances.
Number 32 Janele Linna will not be wearing the Lions blue and white this year.
She was the team's Most Valuable Player and the Association of Division Three Independents Rookie of the Year, scoring 13,4 points per game, plus 6.2 rebounds and 2.5 assists per contest.
She doesn't have a problem with her coach, teammates or academics.
In August Linna was married to Tim Tucker, also of Ontonagon.
Tucker is in the Army as a Military Policeman.
He's based in georgia and already has served one tour of duty...and just started another tour.
"It's hard, but it's not as hard as his first deployment because he was in Afghanistan and now he's in Korea," says Mrs. Tucker. "I'm kind of used to the long distance by now. It's hard, like meeting new people and everything, but...I miss playing basketball. but I guess I like being an Army wife better (laughs)".>
By the way this is a staged picture...a shotgun wedding was not required.
Tim Tucker will be deployed in Korea for 20 more months, then he'll have three years of reserve duty.
Janele Tucker hopes to enroll at the College of Coastal Georgia in January and walk on to the school's new basketball team.
She's the second all-time leading scorer at Ontonagon with 1,117 points.
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