Women's Basketball Nostalgia

One of the best things about being a senior is getting to look at Columbia events with premature nostalgia, and say, “I remember when…” with all the sentiment of your (great) grandparents talking about five-cent movies back in the day.

For example, “I remember when the baseball team won the Ivy title,” or, “I remember when I first tried to navigate up to Baker Field by myself,” or, “I remember when Roar-ee tried to ride a bicycle that one time.” Stuff like that really gets us going. For those of us who were there, these memories take us to a warm and happy place, where we can temper the feelings of anger and frustration usually associated with our interactions with Columbia’s omnipresent bureaucracy.

This weekend’s women’s basketball games gave all of us who came out to the Pink Zone Night an opportunity to create a new historical moment for nostalgia: This past Friday night, Columbia women’s basketball beat Dartmouth.

See, it isn’t the game in itself that’s important. We beat them. It was an extremely close game. It went into overtime. Danielle Browne hit some clutch free throws. Judie Lomax threw up another double-double. My friends in the front row and I managed to get members of the crowd on their feet for the last few intense minutes of the game.

It’s the context of this particular game that makes it important. This wasn’t the first time we’d beaten Dartmouth—we beat them earlier this year on the road. But in sweeping Dartmouth this year, the team set a new record for the program. Only once before in the history of Columbia women’s basketball had the Lions beat Dartmouth twice in one season. It took nearly two decades to do it again, but they did it on Friday.

Dartmouth has historically been a powerhouse in women’s basketball (they’ve got to be good at something, right?), but this year they’re getting edged out by Princeton, Harvard, and dear old Columbia. These bursts of success might involve some clutch recruiting efforts for the other guys—Princeton and Harvard both have freakishly talented freshmen in their starting lineups—but here at home, I think a huge part of this success has to be attributed to finding the right coach for the program at the right time.

Head coach Paul Nixon is by far M. Dianne Murphy’s most valuable coaching pickup in her tenure here as Director of Intercollegiate Athletics and Physical Education. It’s nice to watch a program grow so successfully over the past four years, since I can remember when the women’s basketball team was going through coaches like Kleenex, and talented players were stuck with inconsistency and a program that wasn’t living up to their expectations. Nixon came into his first head-coaching position, and a program where losing was the norm, and has brought the program from a record of 6-21, going 2-12 in the league in his first season to a record of 15-9 so far this season, with four games remaining in the conference. If the team finishes the way they’re projected, Nixon will coach the team to another one of the best records the program has ever seen.

I remember when Danielle, Sara, Caitlin, (and Chelsea) were all freshmen, and everyone knew they had great potential to contribute to the program’s success. Every sport pulls in a crop of freshman athletes that has a few individuals who you hope will start to see minutes right away, but so often the teams are stagnant or limited in their ability to grow and improve and those athletes’ careers stagnate with it. But for those four (now three) girls, the dream of actually turning a program around and setting the precedent for a brighter, more successful future has actually happened. I remember when they were only freshmen—I was reporting on women’s basketball back then, as a young and ignorant Spec associate thinking I’d be a sports editor one day. I’ve changed—I would have never seen myself heckling the way I do now four years ago (I blame Austin for that one)—and luckily enough for Columbia and the athletics community, so have they.

Lisa Lewis is a Barnard College senior majoring in economics.
sporsteditors@columbiaspectator.com