Annika Haley ’26
Sports Editor
The Trinity College women’s basketball team is in preparation for a potentially excellent season after a quite successful 2023-24 year. With an overall winning record of 18-9 and an impressive record of 8-2 within the NESCAC, the Trinity women’s basketball team produced some instrumental wins that paved the way for their success. With a barn-burning loss against Bates in the NESCAC championship semifinals, The Bantams held their heads high and impressively achieved a bid into the NCAA tournament. Losing by just five points, The Bantams could proudly say they had a great run and room to improve in the 2024-2025 season.
Usually, with a great team comes a great coach. Emily Garner served as the head Trinity Women’s Basketball coach for the past eight seasons, guiding the Bantams to both significant success and improvement. In the 2022-2023 season, Garner led her team to the NCAA Division III quarterfinals for the first time, setting a new program record with 25 wins in a single season. Garner was named the 2023 D3Hoop Regional Coach of the year. During the 2022-23 season, the Bantams took off with an astounding 19-1 start, defeating both Amherst and Williams in the postseason to advance to their first NESCAC finals. The Bantams won three NCAA tournament games over Notre Dame (Maryland), Cortland State and Wisconsin-Whitewater.
After eight seasons with Garner, the Trinity women’s basketball Team now has a new head coach, Maria Williamson. Williamson previously coached at the University of Chicago for the last four seasons. While at the University of Chicago, Williamson coached a total 53-24 record and boasted a 23-5 record during the 2022-23 season. Wiliamson guided the University of Chicago women’s basketball team to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Division III Tournament. Her past accolades pose her as a potentially great fit for Trinity.
The Tripod had the opportunity to speak with two junior members of the Trinity Women’s Basketball Team, Lillie Cummings and Lucy Dorian, about their expectations regarding the upcoming season and the change of their head coach. Both Bantams are eager for the 2024-25 season. Forward Lillie Cummings ‘26 stated, “I’m very excited to see what the future holds for a team that has had so much success in the past. I think we have a lot of key attributes for making a successful team this year and I think our team is a lot more balanced. There will be many opportunities for different players to step up leadership-wise and create a team that’s more team focused, rather than looking up to one person to lead the team and score the majority of the points.” Forward/guard Lucy Dorian ‘27 added, “We have a lot of talent on this team that wasn’t utilized in the past. We were fairly young in the past two years and we played a lot of experienced players last year. Now we have a lot of young players that haven’t gotten many minutes and are dying to get on the court and get something started.”
Their excitement for a new dynamic on the court was undoubtedly prevalent, but the loss of key players and a head coach inevitably shifts a team’s energy. Regarding having a new head coach and team this year, Cummings elaborated on her anticipations. “We can expect some bumps in the road naturally, when you have a new system being put in there’s obviously some stuff that we need to work through, but we plan on staying together and relying on our teammates when there is a lot of unknown.” Dorian followed Cummings by adding, “I think a lot of us are really excited, not even for a fresh start, but coming off two really fundamental seasons for basketball, we’re just hungry for more. I think last year we could have done a lot more than we did. Our season kind of got cut short and we weren’t able to make what we really wanted out of it. We are really excited to get back into it and form a new narrative that we didn’t have because you can have a lot of success, but you have to build off of that and last year we didn’t build up as much as we really wanted to.”
Naturally, transitioning to a new coach after the same head coach for eight years is a drastic change, but Cummings expressed that, “Because [Williamson] was hired at the end of the spring, she was very communicative over the summer. She has been communicating with us one-on-one to get to know us not only as a player, but as a person. She has put in a good effort to understand our team dynamics.” Cummings explained that with this change came “a new sense of energy. With change comes nerves but also excitement to see what the future holds.” Dorian then added, “There’s a lot of excitement around the season. We didn’t just lose a coach, but we lost some very key players and a graduate student that had a very big role on our team. I think people are really excited to see how we do this year, and so are we. We are excited to get back to the basics and play together as a deep team.”
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