UW-Whitewater women’s wheelchair basketball picked up a win and a loss in their recent home tournament at Kachel Fieldhouse.
The tournament featured a plethora of schools over the weekend, including Division I schools University of Illinois, University of Arizona and University of Alabama. City University of New York (CUNY) also appeared in the tournament.
“We’ve closed the gaps on a lot more of these tougher teams that are hard to play,” head coach Jake Shafer said. “These ladies are doing a phenomenal job at doing so, so I was very impressed and proud of them this weekend for that.”
Alabama Game
In their first Saturday, Nov. 23 game the Warhawks struggled against Alabama, losing 75-23.
Junior Mada McCabe led the way against the Crimson Tide, totalling 8 points and 5 rebounds. Senior Elizabeth Guerin finished with 8 points, 3 rebounds and an assist, while sophomore Maya Campbell tallied 5 points, 3 rebounds and 3 assists of her own.
“It can get easy to be overwhelmed by the bad things that happen, so keeping our heads high and focusing on the good things I think is very important,” senior Kylee Koenig said.
Alabama’s team featured a number of players who recently played in the Paris 2024 Paralympics Games, including graduate student Bailey Moody and junior Ixhelt Gonzalez, who both won bronze in the 2020 Tokyo games and silver for the 2024 Paris games for Team USA. The Crimson Tide’s roster also featured graduate student Joy Haizelden, who represented Great Britain in the Tokyo and Paris games.
“That game, you really just try to piece together the fundamentals (the) best you can, because if you accomplish it against the best team in the league, you can do it against anybody,” Shafer said. “That was our big focus, and we had some good spurts of that.”
Defensively, the team struggled to contain Alabama’s offensive attack, allowing four Alabama figures to score in double digits.
“We just need to be a little bit better at talking to each other through things, because that’ll keep us more cohesive,” Shafer said. “We’re moving in the right direction. We’ve gotten a lot better as a team.”
CUNY Game
The Warhawks bounced back against CUNY in their second game of the day, defeating the Beavers 49-27.
Both sides of the ball looked more cohesive as a unit, featuring plenty of ball movement on offense and a higher stress towards physicality on the defensive end.
“I think our confidence was a little bit better, and it allowed us to focus on better defensive contact…we just communicated way better with each other,” Shafer said. “If we can just get as comfortable with being as aggressive as possible to force the team into making mistakes, that’s going to help us out a lot.”
Campbell and McCabe continued to lead the way for Whitewater in their routing of CUNY. Campbell totaled 22 points, 4 rebounds and 6 assists while McCabe put up 12 points, 4 rebounds and 7 assists for the Warhawks.
“I saw a bunch of our girls just giving their 100% effort, even though, like, we were still up, we still up in the game, we still put in the same 110% effort,” freshman Maddie Hauder said. “I feel like that’s really important in a game, no matter if you’re winning or losing, to just give it your all, no matter what.”
Women’s wheelchair basketball returns to competitive action Feb. 8 and Feb. 9, 2025, when they play in the Big Cheese Classic at Pewaukee High School.
