For years, most football or baseball teams have used hand signals to communicate plays or formations for a team to run.

Now the ISU women’s basketball team can be added to that list.

As coach Bill Fennelly undergoes a series of 25 radiation treatments for a cancerous lesion on his vocal cords and his ability to call out plays to his team lessens, the Cyclones will be calling both offensive and defensive plays through hand signals.

“We’re going to signal in plays, a little bit like football games, because I can’t scream and holler,” Fennelly said. “Last year we had cards with numbers for defense, but this year we’re going to literally signal in plays.”

While the defense still will be called with numbers as it was in the past, offensive plays will be called through a variety of hand signals similar to what a baseball manager would use.

Fennelly said that while there are some possible drawbacks to the idea, joking they may need to get each player a quarterback wristband with a list of the plays, hand signals can be an advantage, especially when playing on the road.

“We play in a lot of tough environments anyway on the road, so there were a lot of times in the past when I could yell louder than anybody and they couldn’t hear me,” Fennelly said. “It’s just something that we’re going to try and we’ll see how it works. They’re smart kids, and we’ve always recruited kids that have a high basketball IQ.”

Though Fennelly is sometimes unable to yell in practice, freshman forward Brynn Williamson said that he has not lost any of his fire.

“The intensity is just the same,” Williamson said. “Even when we first found out about the cancer and he had the whiteboard at practice, that was kind of more intense than him yelling.

“You always want to pay attention to little things, but now it’s even more important.”

While Fennelly cannot always yell, one of his biggest concerns is finding players who will step in, be vocal and help the team communicate better.

“The communication is an issue and I don’t know if it’s because of the texting, Facebook, Twitter world that they don’t have to talk to anybody anymore, but in basketball you can’t do that,” Fennelly said. “We have to get better at just being able to communicate on the floor. I mean making decisions, commenting and talking.”

Senior guard Lauren Mansfield said she is hoping to step into that leadership role alongside fellow senior guard Chassidy Cole, even if it is a role she is not used to playing.

“Me and [Cole] are really trying to be more vocal even though that’s not really who I am,” Mansfield said. “But I’m trying to do that.”