The Point Loma Nazarene women’s basketball season ended on March 3 with a 75-64, PacWest conference, semifinal loss to Azusa Pacific, in the McCabe Gym, in Honolulu.
For the duration of the game, Azusa Pacific was in the driver’s seat, never trailing, and leading for 36 of 40 minutes. PLNU stayed scrappy though, and with under a minute remaining, fifth-year player and 1,000-point scorer, Hayley Saurette cut the lead to three, with the final basket – a three – of her career, before Azusa Pacific pulled away from the free throw line.
“We were really close to playing up to our potential at the end,” PLNU head coach Charity Elliot said. “I feel really good about that and I think our team feels a sense of we finished on a high note. We won eight of our last 10; we were a two-point game with Azusa with a few minutes left.”
The semifinal loss was an emotional end to a season punctuated with off-court adversity.
“Anytime you do something well and you enjoy each other and want to keep going, there is a sense of sadness and mourning for that,” Elliot said. “But I think every person walked out with their heads held high, proud of how we competed. I don’t think there were many regrets. There was a tremendous sense of pride with where we ended up.”
PLNU finished the season 16-14, after opening the year with four losses in their first five games. The losses on the court felt meaningless compared to the losses off the court.
“It’s worth noting – people don’t know some of the off-the-court things that our team dealt with,” Elliot said. “We had some tremendous loss, we had some deaths, illnesses within families. That really was a sucker punch. It took us a while to get our bearing.”
According to Elliot, the team rallied around each other as they navigated what felt like an unrelenting run of “real-life serious stuff.”
“This team did a tremendous job of being family,” Elliot said. “We had opportunities to put our arms around each other when the next kid came. We had a kid that loses her father and then a grandmother, grandfather, and cousin – we just kept taking care of each other and that’s what family means. We were able to ride the storm of all the emotions and create an environment where our players could find joy in showing up and being together and playing basketball.”
Elliot cited her coaching staff – Grace Ricafranca and Tatum Neubert – as being stalwarts in resilience, keeping the team focused on “what matters most.”
“We had days where we would find out about another situation and be like ‘you’re kidding me, oh my gosh, what’s next?’” Elliot reflected. “We just took it day-by-day and tried to remember why we love this game. There certainly were times that there were tears and basketball didn’t mean that much. I leaned on multiple people to navigate this.”
The end-of-season evaluation hasn’t happened yet – soon though. The toll of the long season and the need to decompress has Elliot in temporary hibernation.
“I sleep a lot,” Elliot said. “Decompress means a lot of quiet time: reading and napping. Most years I get sick right when the season ends, knock on wood I feel great right now.”
Looking towards next season, the team is losing three players: leading rebounder and scorer Saurette and key rotation players Alix Henderson, and Madison Corder.
“The number one thing this particular group of seniors gave us was leadership,” Elliot said. “When things got tough, they could have folded but they didn’t. Corder came in every single day with such joy and enthusiasm. They just set the tone of let’s just keep chipping away. Without their leadership, we don’t finish this way.”
Freshmen Maddie Mersch, Eiley Tippins, and Shayla O’Neil started 22, nine, and four games, respectively. Elliot sees a huge potential for growth next year from her underclassmen.
“The experience they got this year – the minutes; the leadership; the expectations they had to show every day – bodes well for our future,” Elliot said. “We had to start with six freshmen. We had to start very basic and slow with our teaching progression. Next year we may only have two or three new kids, which means the majority hit the ground running. Hopefully, that means we are playing better quicker.”
The team also returns backcourt tandem and double-digit scorers Allie Carreon and Ellie Turk.
The season didn’t end with a conference championship, a banner, or a net being cut down, but what happened between the first basket in November to the final one in March is something Elliot hopes stays with her players long after their time on the hardwood ends.
“This team did not quit,” Elliot said. “You want to put your best foot forward and let the chips fall as they may. We all felt a sense of peace and pride. They may not see it now but I hope they can recognize at some point we did something very special.”
