The Kalamazoo College women's basketball team sat around its home locker room staring last February after a 72-57 loss to Calvin College. They had accomplished so much. The Hornets had won more games than they had in the previous three years combined, and finished with six times as many regular season wins and eight times as many conference wins as they had the year before. Still, the women were nowhere near content. They had lost their final four games of the season and all hopes of them qualifying for their first conference tournament since the four-team format was put into place by the MIAA in 2011-12 had vanished. They weren't ready to swallow that over a nine month offseason. They took no time to look over the numbers and the hurdles they'd made and instead of holding their heads high they stared forward, right into the future.
We dropped a couple of games last season that we should have won and that could have gotten us into the conference tournament," said senior captain Perri Nicholson. "We have unfinished business with the conference tournament. We need to make it back there. We started to make a name for ourselves in the conference last season but we didn't quite get it where we want it to be, so that's unfinished as well."
"Unfinished business" is a term that's familiar around the courts and weight room at Kalamazoo College this year. It's not a verbal concept simply being passed around by word of mouth, it's printed on the back of every single player's warm-up shirts. As if every member of the team is figuratively carrying the weight of last year's crucial losses on their shoulders.
"We should have made the conference tournament last season and we were in a position to and we didn't play our best at the end of the year and took ourselves out of contention," said fourth-year head coach Katie Miller. "It was a bad taste in our mouth that we let those games slip away. Now we know the feeling of getting so close and coming up short and this year we have unfinished business and we're going to think about that every game."
This year's team isn't taking any opponent lightly as they're now fully aware a loss in November can make or break them just as much as one in February can.
"I think one of the biggest lessons we learned is that we have to stay focused throughout the year," said senior captain Hannah Maness. "We got on a good winning streak in December (six games) and then we kind of lost our focus afterwards and I think that's why we lost those last games. We stopped playing as a team and we started just taking it 1 on 1."
So far this year the women have gotten off to a solid start. They're 2-2 and one of their losses was by one point to the very talented and nearly ranked John Carroll University. They've also beaten Wooster and Domincan (Ill) on the road by a combined total of 63 points. Emily Lindsay talked about there being a better vibe on the team this year, and not just when they're on the court.
"We just have fun this year," Lindsay said. "I've had more fun in these first four games than I did in my first three years here."
This year's team hasn't just been through physical and mental changes, they've also been through pretty massive personnel changes with six women suiting up that didn't play last year.
"It's like a fresh start for us," Linsday said. "We have half old and half new so it's kind of been nice to mesh what the older players have learned in their time here with the high energy the newer players have brought."
One of the new players this year is junior guard Kelsey Adamski who has spent one year playing NAIA ball at Cornerstone University and one year playing junior college ball at KVCC. This is Adamski's first year playing NCAA DIII basketball and she's had to adjust quickly after being thrust right into the starting lineup.
"Coming from playing at a JUCO it's definitely a different level," Adamski said. "The talent level here is a lot better, the people are a lot bigger. There are no more smiles with your opponent; they're out for your head."
Adamski also added that her first impression of this Hornet team was that they were the most competitive group of people she's ever met, and she believes they hold the competitive edge over any team they play regardless of talent level. This level of competition remains consistent whether the team is playing in practice against each other or against another DIII school.
"We don't let our friendship get in the way of being competitive with each other," Adamski said. "I think it's really important that at practice we can go hard and we're not afraid of upsetting a teammate while pushing them to get better."
Coach Miller echoed Adamski's sentiments regarding the high-intensity practices and remembered one time earlier this year during a basic rebounding drill when a freshman player tackled sophomore Grace Smith to the ground. Miller knows this level of intensity is due to the depth this year's team is equipped with from top to bottom. Emily Lindsay, the team's second leading scorer, also acknowledged how deep this year's team is.
"All year long people are going to be fighting for spots and we're continuously pushing each other," Lindsay said. "The starters are never comfortable in their position. We have to always watch our back and make sure we're playing the best we can in order to keep our spots."
Lindsay, Perri Nicholson and Hannah Maness are the captains who hope to lead this team to be much better than it was when they got here, yet they all lead in different ways. Maness, while wearing a big fuzzy beanie, said she tries to be the encouraging leader both on and off the court, and is always trying to pick up the girls when they're down. She also added that Nicholson and Lindsay are much more leaders by example to which Lindsay interjected,
"Don't look to me if you need a smile."
Maness, Lindsay, and Querubin Dubois are the players who've played basketball all four years here at K, and the three of them arrived during Coach Miller's first year.
"We had the chance to see them grow up," Miller said. "They came in as 18 year olds and they became better basketball players and better people. Has it always been easy here? No. We struggled their freshman year and we struggled their sophomore year but they didn't give up and they stuck with it. They wanted to make this program better and ultimately it's been paying off."
Emily Lindsay is often viewed as the most serious player both on and off the court, and she has her reasons
"Those of us who've been here the past three years have seen the program at its worst and given no respect," Lindsay said. "I think for us it's a lot about pride and reputation and bringing the program up especially for the freshmen to have a program that people respect in the MIAA. Being picked fourth preseason this year was huge. Building a reputation for this program is bigger than us being seniors and this being our last year. It's about the future."
This team isn't satisfied with being mediocre anymore. A lot of that comes from experience and learning how to win, expecting to win; being able to step on the court confident no matter who they see on the other side.
"I think a few years ago our team didn't have a winning mentality," Nicholson said. "Last year we realized we can win. This year, we know we can win."
The same women who saw the team go 6-44 their first two seasons expect nothing less than finishing top four in the MIAA this season. Of course that attitude has spread across the entire team all the way to the first year players who weren't even around for the tough times.
We've been waiting three years to get to the tournament and this is the year and it's happening," Hannah Maness said.
How will this team reach their goal? By being tough.
"I asked the players what they want to be known for, what they want other teams to see them as," Coach Miller said. "They want to be known as the hardest working team. They want to be the team that makes other coaches say, 'Man your team plays so hard.'"
Around eleven weeks from now this team will finish its regular season sitting in Calvin's away team locker room covered in bruises, scratches, and all sorts of wraps but hopefully filled with no regrets. Not thinking about shots they wished they had or hadn't taken, or defensive assignments they'd fallen asleep on. Instead, they should be licking their wounds, and looking straight forward to their first conference tournament.
Story by Alec Brooks