UW-Whitewater women’s basketball is going into the 2025-26 season with a chip on their shoulder.
With five seniors graduating, four of them being starters and one of those four, Kacie Carollo, being an All-American, the Warhawks are younger and more inexperienced. This has led to outside expectations being lower than usual for the Warhawks. In the D3hoops preseason top 25, UW-W didn’t make the list, instead being relegated to “other teams that received votes.” The dampened expectations haven’t done anything to discourage the Warhawks. In fact, it has just made them hungrier.
“We just want to prove something,” junior guard Bri McCurdy said. “We want to prove that even though we lost a big chunk of our team, we will come back and fill the void. We’ll be just as strong if not stronger.”
Senior guard Renee Rittmeyer echoed that sentiment, but embraced the underdog role while still being fully convinced of the capabilities the team has.
“We’re looking to kind of come from behind and shock people a little bit,” Rittmeyer said. “We want to have that edge to us. Like we’re new but it doesn’t mean we’re worse.”
You can tell by the glint in their eyes and the conviction in which they speak about their expectations for this season that McCurdy and Rittmeyer are not just saying these things because they’re supposed to. They are saying them because they truly believe it. These aren’t just words that are being spoken. They are words that are being put into action.
“They have their eyes set on some pretty lofty goals this year,” head coach Keri Carollo said. “But they are working hard to get to them.”
But what are those goals? For starters, being the WIAC regular season champions. Then winning the WIAC tournament for the second straight season. The next step after that is making their fifth-straight Sweet 16 appearance in the NCAA tournament. However, the ultimate goal is to win the program’s first national championship.
“We don’t change our goals and expectations. We have a very high standard of how hard we work,” Carollo said. “The consistency of our standards and expectations is why we have sustained success.”
But before they can think that far, the Warhawks have to essentially start from scratch and build their way up. UW-W returns just one starter from the 2024-25 squad in McCurdy. They do return four additional players who saw meaningful playing time: Rittmeyer, senior forward Logan Lowry, junior forward Mia Gillis and junior guard Camryn Nies. The five seniors that graduated tallied 3,539 minutes played, which is roughly 56% of the total minutes. That means there are a lot of players taking on a bigger role as well as new players having the opportunity to get meaningful playing time early.
There are two freshmen who look to get playing time early, Brooke Stenklyft and Grace Bronski. Stenklyft is a forward out of Cambridge and was all-state last season. Bronski is a guard out of Chicago and was part of a Loyola Academy team that won the state championship last season.
“Stenklyft has come in and done a great job and Bronski is a physically strong, athletic guard,” Carollo said. “Those two have really stepped up and done a great job of filling in.”
Carollo rarely uses the transfer portal because she believes in developing players from the moment they walk through the doors as a freshman and walk back out those doors as a senior. Carollo emphasizes building relationships with each of her players and having that connection is important for her. If she were to use the portal, it would have to be a unique situation, like this year.
The Warhawks have one transfer, Caden Krohn, a sophomore forward out of Waukesha who transferred from Maryville University (Missouri). Carollo actually recruited Krohn out of high school which helped make this connection possible. Krohn is another candidate to see some playing time early on this season.
Going into this season McCurdy and Rittmeyer have taken upon more of a leadership role, becoming more vocal and making sure the younger members of the team know what the expectations are.
“I just want to be the best leader and captain I can for the team because we don’t have as much experience as we’ve had in the past,” McCurdy said. “I’ll say the hard things even though they may not always want to hear it. But I’ll also pull the team together, emphasize what needs to be done and then execute it.”
Culture has been a key aspect to the sustained success the Warhawks have had. In the press conference following the Sweet 16 loss to UW-Stout last season, senior guard Maggie Trautsch talked about how the team felt like a family, which speaks to the closeness of the team on and off of the court.
“This has been everything. I’m super grateful for every opportunity given. This feels like a family and I’m going to miss them a lot,” Trautsch said.
The university as a whole emphasizes “tradition of success” and the women’s basketball team is the epitome of that. They’ve made four straight Sweet 16’s or better and are looking to make it five this season. But in order to do that, it’s going to take some work.
“Our quote this year is work works,” Rittmeyer said. “It’s super simple but it’s something that we build off of. We pride ourselves on working hard, how much we lift, how much we condition and how hard our practices are. And that leads into the style of basketball we want to play.”
The style of basketball the Warhawks want to have this season is fast and aggressive. They want to have an up-tempo offense, driving downhill and finding different ways to score. Carollo also wants an aggressive and physical defense. McCurdy and Rittmeyer are perfect fits for what the Warhawks want to do this season.
Last season, McCurdy averaged 6.1 points per game on 38.6 percent shooting. But where she made her impact the most felt is with her defense. McCurdy was second on the team with 42 steals. Over the off-season she’s worked on rounding out her offensive game, finding ways to be more consistent with her shot, getting to the rim, mid-ranges and just finding different ways to score.
“Last year I was so defensively focused that it’s hard to not have that be the best aspect of my game,” McCurdy said. “I’m hoping as the season progresses and as I start to fill the role of a scorer that offense will become one of my stronger aspects too.”
While Rittmeyer’s stats may not jump off the page, she’s well rounded in terms of finding different ways to contribute to the team while she’s on the floor which often don’t appear on the statsheet.
“I’m not a super flashy player but I pride myself on working hard and getting those 50/50 balls,” Rittmeyer said. “I love rebounding and I feel that getting an offensive board can be really frustrating to the other team.”
The unique thing about 2025-26 Warhawks is that they’re very balanced. There will be 10-12 players who contribute on a nightly basis, whether that’s for scoring or for defense.
“Everyone will have an opportunity to contribute,” Carollo said. “Hopefully there’ll be a bunch of different names that you’ll be able to rattle off and see how each person contributes in a different way.”
Before the regular season begins, the Warhawks play in two exhibition games against Edgewood University and the Milwaukee School of Engineering, with the latter being an away game.
The Edgewood University game allowed for Carollo to see how the Warhawks stacked up against a different team rather than against one another. The MSOE game is the final tune up before the regular season officially starts and allows UW-W to go against a veteran group on the road which will be very beneficial for a younger, inexperienced team.
“These are opportunities for us to get out the measuring stick and see where we’re at as well as where we need to improve,” Carollo said. “See how we react and how we handle adversity so we can prepare for the regular season.”
The Warhawks tip off the regular season on November 8 against Washington University (St. Louis) and have two months of non-conference opponents. While the WIAC is usually the gauntlet, and it still is, the Warhawks face several tough out-of-conference opponents this season. They face several preseason top 25 teams such as No. 10 Illinois Wesleyan, No. 14 John Carroll, No. 18 Calvin College and No. 25 Mary Hardin-Baylor.
“Our schedule is not going to allow us to ease our way into things,” Carollo said. “It’ll be good for us though, especially with the young group, to see how we match up with some of these really good teams. I think we’ll be able to handle adversity right away and really test ourselves early on and prepare us for conference play.”
UW-W starts conference play Jan. 3 on the road with a WIAC tournament rematch against UW-Oshkosh, who drew praise from Division I Iowa State for how they competed in their exhibition game. The WIAC figures to be another tough gauntlet this season, with Oshkosh being ranked No. 3 and UW-La Crosse ranked No. 15 in the preseason top 25. UW-Stout and UW-River Falls also received top 25 votes.
“I look forward to the conference games. They just have that different energy to them and the higher stakes, almost like ‘do or die’ or ‘go to war’ kind of thing,” Rittmeyer said. “These games help just get you into the mindset of ‘every game does matter’ because our conference is so good.”
Last season five out of the eight teams in the WIAC qualified for the NCAA tournament with two of those teams making it all the way to the Final Four. The conference games are so tough and physical that it’s almost like the playoffs start two months early.
As the Warhawks prepare to start this season, they’ll be missing five of their seniors from last season: Trautsch, Kacie Carollo, Mallory Olloffson, Olivia Zuege and Katie Hildebrandt. While Trautsch and Kacie Carollo made lasting statistical contributions, Trautsch being the 20th player in program history to join the 1,000 point club and Kacie being an All-American, all five seniors made their mark on the program.
“This last year was a pretty special group,” Carollo said. “Besides all of the statistical things they were fantastic leaders, worked super hard and set the standard of what Warhawk women’s basketball is all about.”
While the group of seniors may not be physically on the court for the Warhawks, they’ll be competing vicariously through players like McCurdy and Rittmeyer.
“They took me underneath their wing right from the get go,” McCurdy said. “Starting as a freshman, obviously, is a little nerve wracking and they helped me be able to compete at such a high level. Seeing what Kacie and Maggie have done and being able to play with them has shown me what it takes to be a great player as well.”
As the season approaches the Warhawks are looking forward to showing the rest of Division Three just what they’re capable of. They start their season Nov. 8 against Washington University in Kachel Gymnasium.
“We’re all super excited about what we can do,” Rittmeyer said. “While other people may have lower expectations for us, we don’t.”
