MENOMONIE — Last season, the UW-Stout women’s basketball rewrote the program’s record books.
The Blue Devils reached their second consecutive NCAA Division III tournament and achieved the program’s first ever Elite 8 and Final Four appearances.
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Stout was led by seven seniors, five of whom left the program as All-Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference team members. Senior Raegan Sorensen left the program as its all-time leading scorer with 1,754 career points.
This season, Stout coach Hannah Iverson turns a new leaf and welcomes back one senior, Rosella Wille, and four juniors, while also hoping to mix her 10 underclassmen, including sophomore Mary Berg, more into the fold.
“Everybody takes on a different role. Everybody fills a different gap, whether it’s bigger, smaller (or) morphed into something else,” Iverson said. “You add new pieces, you lose pieces. It’s the blessing and the curse that is college athletics.”
Berg and Wille played the most minutes last year, 622 and 578, respectively, of the returning Stout players.
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The pair hope to use their on-court experience to help the Blue Devils thrive and use lessons learned from past leadership to help continue the Stout standard that was set before them.
“Of course, there’s going to be ups and downs,” Berg said. “(We’re) focusing on the learning and taking extra reps. We have such good chemistry off the court, and (we’re) trying to relate that to on the court.”
“The past three years I’ve been focusing on what I can take from every senior class and being a sponge from my previous teammates, and how I can take what they gave me and give that to other people,” Wille said. “I feel really confident in my role this year as a leader. I’ve played with the greatest people, and they’ve made it super easy to rise to that level.”
Stout will look to get more contributions this year from the likes of juniors Grace Schisel and Eleice Dahl, and sophomores Madison Malecha and Julia Rybacki.
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“You can only play five guys at a time, and we had a pretty good roster last year. So, everybody’s thinking these are new faces,” Iverson said. “They’ve been in (our) practices for a long time, and I think it’ll be exciting to show them off here as we go.”
Iverson said that being a part of a team that went to the Final Four a year ago has encouraged her underclassmen to want to reach the same heights. She said they’ve shown progress and are hungry to learn more.
“From a coaching perspective, we’ve had more people learning the things that we’re doing (for) the first time they’ve ever learned it than we’ve had in the past three years,” Iverson said. “But, I think that’s exciting. They’re excited to hear it, learn it and be a part of it. That’s part of the special things that we have at Stout.”
“At times, practice looks a little chaotic, but I feel like every single day we are getting better, and I feel like every single day we will continue to get better,” Wille said.
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UW-Stout women’s basketball kicks off its season this weekend against Ripon College and Lakeland University at the UW-Eau Claire Tip-Off Tournament at the Sonnentag Center.
“Our goal is to get to a national championship,” Berg said. “That’s always in our mind. I think (it takes) little wins to get there. Get the first win, get a conference win, get non conference wins.”
“One thing that we keep resorting back to is we are not finished, and, just because we’re a new team, our level of expectations do not fall,” Wille said. “This weekend is a really good opportunity for us to go and show that we have an amazing coaching staff and a really sound system that will help us just get to that point.”
“Basketball season’s the best time of year,” Iverson said. “This is the part of the year where you love to get to play somebody else and have a different opponent rather than your own team. We’re super excited. We want to approach it the same way, no matter if it’s the beginning of the season or end of the season.”
