'A dream come true': Ashland Eagles return home as NCAA champs

ASHLAND — Every little girl who starts out bouncing a ball and shooting baskets in the driveway dreams of being a champion one day.

Members of the 2022-23 Ashland University women’s basketball team don’t have to dream anymore.

Two days after winning the school’s third NCAA Division II national title, the Eagles brought the trophy home on Monday afternoon to Ashland, where they were celebrated by hundreds of purple-clad fans holding signs and waving pom-poms along Main Street, Claremont Avenue and outside Kates Gymnasium.

“In my front yard I think I won a lot of gold medals in my head,” said senior forward Annie Roshak, who was named the Most Outstanding Player in AU’s 78-67 victory over Minnesota-Duluth in Dallas after a 20-point, 13-rebound performance. “To actually have it come to fruition is a dream come true. Just relishing this moment.

“It feels really good, it feels awesome, but I don’t know if it’s fully set in yet.”

To crown their national title, the 37-0 Eagles also received all 23 first-place votes in the final Women's Basketball Coaches Association poll of the season released Monday.

AU has been the No. 1 team in the WBCA poll a record 55 times after a decade of basketball dominance. The Eagles are 114-3 all-time as the No. 1-ranked team in the country.

“This is more than I could have ever asked for, imagined, dreamed of,” said fifth-year guard Hallie Heidemann, who stepped off the bus holding the national championship trophy draped with a net from American Airlines Center in Dallas. “This has been such a joy and a gift.

“I still can’t put it into words even though it’s been two days since the championship. It’s been incredible, absolutely incredible.”

The championship and Ashland greeting was especially meaningful to fifth-year guard Maddie Maloney, who transferred to AU from Saginaw Valley State for her final year of basketball.

“I’m getting choked up,” she said while surrounded by the crowd on campus. “This is more than I could have ever imagined. This was something we’ve looked forward to and looked toward our whole life. This is what everybody hopes for and dreams for and prays for.

“I’m just really proud of our team and so excited for all of us to have this together.”

While Roshak intends to return for a fifth season of eligibility as the school’s fifth all-time leading scorer (1,861 points), tri-captains Heidemann, Maloney and senior Sam Chable will be departing.

Heidemann finished her remarkable career with the national title and a few school records. She is AU’s all-time leader in games played (153), and three-point field goals made (367). That’s the ninth best all-time mark in Division II.

She finished seventh on AU's all-time scoring list with 1,677 career points and is one of only three players in program history with at least 1,500 points, 500 rebounds, 300 assists and 200 steals in a career.

“I’m super thankful that basketball here at Ashland has led me into so many incredible relationships and allowed me to meet so many amazing people, and also that it’s allowed me to experience more of Jesus Christ and … and encounter him through the game of basketball,” Heidemann said.

Last weekend marked just the second time the NCAA has conducted its championship weekend for all three divisions at the same site. The celebration of women’s basketball and 50th anniversary of Title IX allowed the team to be a part of many special events, including the Division I Final Four semifinal games, and the championship game.

Before Sunday’s game between eventual champion LSU and Iowa, team members and members of Division III champion Transylvania University got to hold the court-sized American flag for the national anthem.

“The Dallas experience was amazing,” said AU coach Kari Pickens, who became the first person in Division II basketball to win a national title as a player (2013), as an assistant coach (2017) and as a head coach. “They did the Dallas trip up right.

“We were down there for six days. We got to go to the Final Four games, the national championship game, we were in a suite all by ourselves. We got to have a salute event where we were rubbing shoulders with (Iowa star) Caitlin Clark, (LSU coach) Kim Mulkey, (South Carolina coach) Dawn Staley and (South Carolina star) Aliyah Boston. That was really, really cool.

“And then we had a ton of photo shoots and interviews and videos. They just made it feel like a really first-class experience.”

Since going to its first national championship game in 2012 (the Eagles finished second), the AU program has posted some remarkable numbers in the last 12 seasons.

The Eagles are 359-39 overall and 194-13 at Kates Gymnasium with three national championships under three head coaches (Sue Ramsey, Robyn Fralick and Pickens).

Heidemann, Roshak, Chable and graduate assistant coach Erin Daniels have been a part of two of the three undefeated seasons during that span. The 2019-20 squad was 31-0 when the COVID pandemic shut down the season just before the NCAA tournament.

There was a Division II record 73-game winning streak, seven seasons of 30 or more wins, 11 NCAA tournaments, nine conference tournament titles and eight conference regular-season championships.

But the 2022-23 team that fans welcomed home Monday will always be special. Buoyed by transfer players Zoe Miller, Savaya Brockington and Maloney, the champion Eagles were a team in the truest sense of the word.

“Once we knew who exactly was going to be on our team, I knew then just how special we could be,” Pickens said. “We had a lot of different pieces to put together, a lot of new faces.

“But this team put aside everything selfish and did what was best for the team and came out with a big win. Everyone put aside selfish ambition for us to be able to accomplish what we did this weekend.”

This championship team also is special for what it means to the university.

“The national recognition is off the charts,” AU director of athletics Al King said. “A school our size couldn’t pay for this.

“And you can see today probably the biggest outpouring we’ve had with any of these championship teams. What it’s done to lift morale, lift spirits, to increase the name, you could plan and plan for this for two, three, four months and how would you do something like this?

“The girls today, just to see them on the bus when they saw all of this in town here, they were just stunned. … Not taking away from the other two (national championship teams), but this team, the university and the community just bonded with them so much.”

This article originally appeared on Ashland Times Gazette: Women's Basketball: NCAA champion Ashland Eagles return home