The Green Terror women’s basketball team scored a successful year, clinching the regular season championship and going on for the first time to host the Centennial Conference women’s basketball championship tournament, where they lost to Ursinus in the semifinals. The team was also rewarded with its first-ever NCAA tournament at-large bid.

But these student-athletes are just as successful in the classroom as they are on the court. The five seniors on the team have a cumulative GPA of 3.78, and four have been invited to join the nation’s most prestigious honor society, Phi Beta Kappa.

“I think that everyone on our team recognizes the importance of success in the classroom,” says Biology major Katy Powell ’07. “We don't like to fail at anything we do, so we work as hard academically as we do on the court. A busy schedule has forced us to become better organized in order to keep up with basketball and schoolwork.”

Upon graduation, Powell, who is active in Tri-Beta, the DIVAS (Dedicated, Involved, Volunteering Association of Sisters), Omicron Delta Kappa and the Student Athletic Advisory Committee, is planning to work in cancer research or public health.

With 400 student-athletes on 24 intercollegiate teams, as well as more than a dozen intramural opportunities, about 40-percent of students take advantage of recreational or competitive athletics during their college career.

“We expect a lot from our student athletes,” says Carol Fritz, associate director of athletics. “While being a student comes first, we feel that athletics rounds out their education.”

Heather Thompson ’07 chose McDaniel because of her passion for basketball and a quality education, and her desire to be successful in both.

“One of the reasons I came to a Division III college was because of the emphasis they put on academics,” says the double major in Business Administration and Economics. “It helps to have such great support from the coaches toward academics.”

Thompson, a member of three honor societies, has accepted a job as a staff accountant with the Pennsylvania firm “LarsonAllen,” and plans to move to the Philadelphia area with her fiancé Joe Meier ’04 after graduation.

“One of the most rewarding aspects of coaching is seeing who these students are when they walk in as freshmen and seeing who they become by the time they walk across the stage to graduate,” says Women’s Basketball Head Coach and alumna Rebecca Martin ’80. “It is a magnificent transformation and a unique experience that we as coaches have an opportunity to be a part of.”

Martin’s team has won three CC championships in the last six years but claimed its fourth berth into the NCAA tournament this year, marking the first time the squad earned an at-large bid. The Green Terror claimed the conference crown and the CC's automatic NCAA bid in 2002, 2004 and 2005.