By It’s no secret that the Carroll College women’s basketball program has proved itself to be a NAIA powerhouse. From the outside look, most people do not know how the players and the coaches cultivated a winning culture to get to the pinnacle.
The Saints finished their 2022-2023 season with a 27-6 record, while winning both the Frontier Conference regular season title and Frontier Conference tournament.
This year’s success is the reflection of a process that took years to build up, going back to the 2016-2017 season, when the Saints lost in the first round of the Frontier Conference Tournament to their archrival, Montana Tech.
The following year was marked by a turnaround season, the official start of “the golden era” of the women’s basketball team. Future program icons, but freshmen at the time, Danielle Wagner, Jaidyn Lyman, and Christine Denny signed to the team that year.
That year, the team won the conference and advanced to the second round of the national tournament, and the program hasn’t stopped flying since.
The 25-8 record in the 2017-2018 season, topped with all the accolades were enough to spark interest from recruits. In 2017, star guard Sienna Swannack, a current fifth-year senior from Nine Mile Falls, Washington, majoring in civil engineering, signed to the Fighting Saints.
“Christine Denny and I played on the same AAU team from when we were in 5th grade until college, so when Coach Sayers started recruiting her, she also started recruiting me,” Swannack said.
“I went to a football game and the community support and atmosphere was just something I couldn’t turn down and the team was so welcoming. Coach Sayers is alSso extremely personable and persistent, so I knew Carroll would feel like home,” Swannack said.
Swannack admires the culture Sayers has cultivated.
“The culture of the women’s basketball team is just pure winning,” Swannack said. “This program under Coach Sayers has been determined to win championships, and since my freshman year, that’s all we’ve done. We are also a family, a team that would do anything for one another which I think contributes our success.”.
In Swannack’s first year, the Saints finished with a 26-8 overall record, won the Frontier Conference Tournament, and once again, advanced to the second round of the NAIA National Tournament. Their continued success kept attracting more talent to add to the squad.
For the 2019-2020 season, the Saints added Kamden Hilborn, also a current fifth-year senior from Clancy, Montana, majoring in health science and minoring in chemistry. Hilborn is a point guard who transferred from Montana State University.
“I transferred home to Carroll because it was the best fit for a great academic school and winning basketball program,” said Hilborn. “It was a pretty smooth transition and the team I transferred onto was a great group that was super easy to play with and get along with… It felt like a really easy transition just because the team was already so skilled. Finding my place in it did take some time through the first few months, but eventually I kind of settled in and it worked out.”
The Saints had a good season, finishing 21-10, but took a step back from previous years, likely due to the loss of Hannah Dean, a NAIA First-Team All American, who graduated the year prior.
Moving on to the next season, Coach Sayers knew she had to reinforce her interior play after losing Dean and most of the seniors that year who were also bound to graduate that year.
Jamie Pickens, a transfer from the University of Montana for the 2020-2021 season, would fill that gap.
“I came to Carroll for the amazing opportunity to play basketball at a great program while also receiving a top tier education,” said Pickens, a senior from Helena double majoring in health science and nursing.
For the 2020-2021 season, the super team of the Saints consisted of the starting lineup of Hilborn, Wagner, Swannack, Denny, and Pickens, and they seemed to click immediately.
The Saints finished with a remarkable 21-3 record, winning both the Frontier Conference regular season and tournament championships, but finished with a sour taste in their mouths with an early exit in the new format, NAIA Regional Tournament; previously, the teams went straight into the Round of 64, but now, teams are separated into 16 pods of 4 teams each, and the winner of each group advances to the national tournament Round of 16. Carroll traveled to Lewiston, Idaho, and lost their final game to Lewis-Clark State College, 67-76.
That bitter feeling helped all the seniors of that class come back for the newly established “fifth-year” of eligibility, granting student-athletes an extra year that was taken away because of COVID-19.
The studded senior class of Wagner, Denny, and Lyman unanimously agreed to come back and finish what they started on a high note.
That is exactly what they did.
With the super team and a year of chemistry under their belt, the Saints finished the 2021-2022 season with a 27-8 record, winning a share of the Frontier Conference regular season title, spooking the NAIA Regionals Tournament ghost and winning their pod in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Their season would unfortunately come to an end in the Sweet 16 of the national tournament, losing to Morningside University, 67-71. And with that, the super Saints team would end their run together.
With the inevitable departure of Wagner, Denny, and Lyman after doing their overtime, the Saints came into the 2022-2023 season with some doubts, not sure if they would be as successful as the previous years.
They were returning Hilborn, Swannack, and Pickens, but there were questions if the voids left by the class of 2022 would be too big.
But the Saints quickly shut those questions down.
With Maddie Geritz (redshirt senior forward), Addi Ekstrom (sophomore guard), and new University of Montana transfer Kyndall Keller (junior guard) stepping up, the Saints would have an even better season than the year before.
As mentioned previously, the Saints finished with a 27-6 record, beating teams in the NAIA National top-25 ranking in non-conference play, and then running away with the Frontier Conference regular season title, winning the games comfortably by an average margin of 15 points.
The momentum carried into the conference tournament, which they also won.
Then, they won the NAIA Regionals Tournament for the second year in a row, and won a game in the NAIA National Tournament before losing in the Elite 8 in a tight game to Dakota State University 72-82, in a game that was decided in the final minutes.
Pickens credits the team’s success with their devotion to each other and their coaching staff.
“We have a great coaching staff that makes us better every single game and prepares us well for every single game we have,” said Pickens.
Iconic Saints, like Hilborn and Swannack will be graduating, and with Pickens still undecided on her future, uncertainty is up in the air once again on what the team will look like for the next years to come. It is safe to say that the Saints have proven time after time that they are a force to be reckoned with, no matter who’s on the roster.
We can expect players like Keller and Ekstrom to keep stepping up, while seeing who else will take on bigger roles next season.
But as they have shown time and time again, the winning culture that has been engrained throughout these last few seasons is here to stay, no matter what.
As Pickens described it, “we have been so successful because of this team’s willingness to commit to one another and play for something bigger than ourselves.”
