Sports Spotlight
Busting out the scissors and cutting down the nets
Albion’s women’s basketball team brings home its first championship banner

March 5, 2004
by Jake Lloyd
Sports Editor

Vanessa Thompson, Auburn Hills junior, was more than willing to put off her usual homework for an hour or so last Sunday night.

That’s because Thompson and the rest of the Albion College women’s basketball team were getting together in the varsity athletic lounge of the Dow Center to watch the women’s college basketball NCAA Division III tournament selection show. They were gathering to find out who and where they would play in the first round this past Wednesday.

Albion earned the automatic bid to the tournament—its first since the tournament’s inception in 1983—by winning its first Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association (MIAA) tournament last weekend. It’s safe to say it was a weekend of firsts for the Britons.

“I think our girls really stepped it up in the postseason when we needed to,” said third-year coach Doreen Belkowski. “I think our effort in the tournament was so much better than most of the time in the regular season.”

Belkowski turned a team that went 4-21 the year before her arrival into an NCAA tournament-caliber squad.

Angie Spain, Hartland senior, said, “This is the best way to go out.”

Just four years ago, Spain was part of that 4-21 squad. She said things turned around for the program the following year when the Britons had nothing to lose and won their first game—and many more—gaining some much-needed confidence. Albion finished that season 17-9, and since then it’s been all about taking baby steps to the top.

“We always had the talent,” Spain said. “We just wanted to keep improving.”

Albion entered this season with extremely high expectations. It was picked by the MIAA coaches to win the conference, and although that didn’t happen during the regular season, the tournament was Albion’s opportunity to earn that ranking.

“When it came tournament time we were just like, ‘This is our time to prove that we deserve that number one rating,’” Spain said.

To win the championship, Albion had to go through Hope College and Calvin College, two teams that have owned the Britons in previous years. Hope, Albion’s semifinal opponent, defeated the Britons in the semifinals the past two years.

However, after beating the Flying Dutchmen the last weekend of the regular season, the Britons were more confident than ever, and it showed in their 63-47 road tournament victory.

“We have a lot more confidence in each other and our team gelled a lot better than the team did last year,” Thompson said. “Honestly, no one on the team ever thought we were going to lose to Hope. We’ve been the underdogs the whole year and there’s really no pressure for us. Everybody expects us to lose anyway. We were just going out there to try and prove everybody wrong.”

Unlike during the regular season, when Albion let a few games (against Hope and Calvin in particular) slip out of its grasp in the final minutes, the Britons made the plays in crunch time during the tournament.

In the championship game at Calvin, Albion trailed 45-42 with two minutes remaining, and it looked like the Knights might sneak out of their home gym with the title.

But Thompson put an end to that idea by knocking down a contested three-pointer and then scoring on a fastbreak layup to give the Britons a 47-45 lead that they would hold on to, as they won 49-45.

“We were really calm,” Thompson said. “I was just thinking that we weren’t gonna lose this game the whole time. Once that shot [the three-pointer] went down I was feeling pretty good.”

Albion made adjustments —watching hours of film—from earlier losses to Hope and Calvin that paid off in the tournament. For instance, Calvin’s Kristen McDonald lit up Albion for 26 points in the teams’ second meeting two weeks ago. However, in the championship game Albion held McDonald to just two points on 1-of-10 shooting, and forced her to commit five turnovers in 24 minutes of play.

Belkowski put Jaime Fornetti, Iron Mountain sophomore, on McDonald for most of the game, and Fornetti shut down one of the Knights’ top weapons.

“Jaime played great defense on her and we made her take a lot of shots that she didn’t want to [take],” Belkowski said.

It wasn’t just Fornetti’s defense that was a force in the tournament. The Britons held Hope to miserable 28.3 percent shooting, while the Knights shot just 37 percent.

And Albion needed the defense, because it didn’t shoot the ball much better. It shot 32.8 percent against Hope and 34 percent versus Calvin.

Since Belkowski took over she has stressed the importance of defense, and in the tournament it was the Britons’ defense that put them in the position to win games.

“We just focused on defense and that’s why defense won us a lot of games this year,” Belkowski said.

All season long Albion players were tired of entering Kresge Gymnasium and not seeing a single women’s basketball banner. So they set a simple goal of getting themselves a banner, and in making history, they did just that.