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Women's basketball ends season with a win and a loss

Pioneer women finish strong at home but continue to struggle with consistency, losing their final game on the road

by Kevin Byrne

An exciting victory and a disappointing defeat finished up the regular season for Grinnell's women's basketball team. Knox College visited Grinnell for the last Pioneer home contest of the season and Grinnell promptly handed Knox its second loss against the Pioneers this season.

The two seniors led the way down the stretch to secure the season sweep of the Prairie Fire, as Katy Bowen scored a team-high 15 points and Lauren Meredith added nine points and three rebounds.

Both Bowen and Meredith sank key free throws in the final minute to protect Grinnell's narrow lead on the way to a 63-59 victory.

Bowen finished with 15 points, five rebounds, five assists, two steals and one block.

Hannah Wolf '08 added 12 points of her own, along with four rebounds, three assists and three steals. Laura Burton '08 scored six points and Emily Kolbe '07 had four points, six rebounds and two assists.

"It felt great to pick up a win in our last home game," said Meredith. "This season has been up and down for us, but to finish at home like we did feels good. We've been working hard for a long time and it's nice to know that the hard work can pay off."

The Pioneers took their victory and went on the road to Lake Forest College last Saturday for their final contest of the season.

Unfortunately, the women's basketball team could not capitalize on the positive momentum from their recent win against Knox.

The Pioneers found themselves down by eight at halftime, but came out of the locker room with some intensity and managed to tie the game with 17 minutes left in regulation.

Grinnell and Lake Forest see-sawed for the better part of the second half, but with seven minutes left, the Foresters began to pull away.

The Pioneers could not catch up to Lake Forest in the end and fell with a final score of 90-75.

"Lake Forest consistently out-rebounded us throughout the game," said Bowen, "but we were making shots and were able to keep up with them. They went on a run midway through the second half where we missed some shots and they had some easy fast break lay-ups that we were never able to recover from."

Bowen became Grinnell's second all-time leading scorer during the game, as her 21 points were enough to push her past Missy Sharer '91 for second place.

Bowen finishes her career with 1280 points.

Wolf also had a big game as she scored 19 points, including five three-pointers.

Burton scored six and Meredith had five points and three rebounds in her final game.

The loss gave Grinnell a finishing record of 9-14 overall (5-11 MWC). This last pair of games reflects the unstable ups and downs that were present for most of the season for the women's basketball team. The returning players will look to improve on their consistency as well as their record when they begin the next season.

"I think the team knows that we didn't always perform to our greatest potential this year," said Meredith. "With many of the players returning, the team can look forward to being more experienced and poised for next year's season. Rebounding was definitely an area that hurt us this year and could make the difference for the team's success in the future."

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