Schuckman: Lessons from breakthrough season will help Hawks ‘remember that you can’

ALLENDALE, Mich. — The Quincy University women’s basketball team found itself where it wasn’t expected to be Friday night.

Still playing.

Hawks coach Courtney Boyd wanted her players to take note of that. Their season ended with a 108-72 loss to top-seeded Grand Valley State in the quarterfinals of the NCAA Division II Midwest Regional at the GVSU Fieldhouse Arena, but the journey to get there needed to resonate more than the final score.

So in her postgame locker room speech — the season eulogy coaches dread delivering — Boyd focused on what the Hawks did, not what they didn’t do.

“I said to them, ‘If any time in your life someone tells you that you can’t, I want you to reflect back on this season and remember that you can,’” Boyd said.

The Hawks overcame adversity.

They overcame history.

And they overcame doubt.

“Everything that they’ve done, no one believed that we could do,” Boyd said. “Every single time adversity hit, they moved forward. Nobody expected us to win more than 15 games, and we ran off 15 in a row.”

They did it with the same kind of determination and passion Boyd coaches with.

The Hawks erased fourth-quarter deficits six times, third-quarter deficits three other times and never once viewed themselves as being out of the game. They avenged losses to Upper Iowa, Drury and Maryville by winning the second meeting with each and erased nearly a decade of frustration.

The 20-win season and NCAA Tournament berth were the first since the 2015-16 team accomplished both. The Great Lakes Valley Conference Tournament championship was the program’s first in 20 years. And the 15-game win streak is the second-longest in program history.

“I’m very proud of the effort,” Boyd said.

And the Hawks’ maturity.

For a group that had never experienced success together, for a program that hadn’t enjoyed a winning season in nearly a decade, they acted like they belonged on the national stage, even if the score didn’t always reflect it.

“If you’ve never experienced the moment, the moment is big,” Boyd said.

It makes you want another chance at it.

“Now we’ve been at the big tournament, and we’ve been on the stage,” Boyd said. “They won’t just want to be on the stage. As cliche as it sounds, I think they’ll want to do a little dancing.”

They’ll need a little help. The Hawks say goodbye to six seniors or graduate students who each played a significant role in their success, but the group that returns can show the next class of recruits how to buy in and embrace everything Boyd and her staff are preaching and teaching.

There’s a blueprint now for where it leads.

It’s where no one expected them to be.

“The hardest part about a group of people that do something nobody believes in is now you have to prove that it wasn’t a fluke,” Boyd said.

This was no fluke. This was just the beginning.