Yes, they finished the season with a losing record. But the team’s 12 wins tied women’s basketball—one of Wesleyan’s strongest teams—for the top total among winter squads. The team’s 12 victories were also its highest in ten years (the 1998-99 squad went 13-11). And the Cards suffered a pair of 5-4 losses in the middle of the season, including one to a team it defeated handily later in the season (Colby) and another that included a 3-2 loss and an injury default (against Franklin & Marshall). In short, these girls narrowly missed bringing finishing the season with the best record among Wesleyan’s 11 winter teams. And it seems as though they’re only going to continue to get better.
The team went 7-21 in head coach Shona Kerr’s inaugural season (2005-06) before going 7-16 the following winter and improving to 11-16 last year. Kerr, who was the head coach at Wellesley before going to the Tech, turned the Blue into a power and is doing the same with the Cards. Perhaps the most impressive part of this ascension is the Cardinals’ strength up and down the ladder: Wesleyan had a winning record at the fourth, fifth, seventh, eighth and ninth spots. This balance was on display during the Vassar Team Challenge, where the Cardinal men and women combined to win 31 individual matches and bring home the title. The Wes women also took home the consolation title in the NESCAC Championship with victories over Conn. College and Colby, thanks in part to a combined 12-3 record from the #5 through #9 spots. And although the team dropped a trio of matches to Little Three rival Amherst, two of the three ended in 6-3 scores, marking the first time Wesleyan won three matches against the Lord Jeffs since 1983. Look for Wesleyan to vanquish the Lord Jeffs next year and continue its rapid rise up the NESCAC ladder.
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