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ASHLAND — In the past 11 years, the Ashland University women’s basketball team has won the NCAA Division II national championship twice, finished national runner-up two more times, had two undefeated seasons with one more currently in the making, and earned a 356-39 record.
The last time the Eagles had a losing season, George W. Bush was president, the internet was in its infancy and the current lady Eagles were children.
The head coach for that last losing season 20 years ago was Sue Ramsey, who would go on to transform the women’s basketball program into the powerhouse it is today — with some help from Ashland’s current head coach, Kari Pickens.
Ramsey believed if she could bring in the right players, she could drive the program to new heights.
What made a player “right” for Ramsey’s team, beyond stellar athletic performance, was a commitment to academics, community service and good citizenship, Ashland University Athletic Director Al King said.
She could have brought in “mercenary” players, outstanding athletes that could help the team on the court, but who did not line up with Ramsey’s moral qualifications, but she never did, King said.
“Some people would say to me, that’s too rigid. No, they aren’t saying it now because the way we’ve won. But Sue did that,” he said.
Even when the team suffered a few seasons under a .350 winning percentage in the late 90’s, when the women’s basketball team only drew crowds of a few hundred, she didn’t lose that vision.
The program’s breakthrough finally arrived in the 2010-11 and 2011-2012 seasons, when Ramsey recruited Jena Stutzman and Kari Pickens (then Kari Daugherty), both Division I athletes who left their previous schools to play for Ashland.
In Pickens’ first season in 2011-12, she had three games where she scored over 30 points, set NCAA Division II tournament records for rebounds and field goals, had 11 games where she didn’t miss a free throw, set a slew of team records and led the Eagles to a national runner-up finish.
In her second season, she led them back to finish the job, bringing home AU’s first national women’s basketball championship.
“I’ve never seen a player at this level play like Kari could,” King said.
Ashland’s back-to-back national championship appearances “opened the gate” for recruitment, allowing the university to select more and more talented players that made the roster “deeper” and “faster,” King said.
The university got behind the women’s basketball program, and a series of stellar coaches have kept the program dominant ever since.
When Ramsey retired after the 2014-2015 season, her assistant coach Robyn Fralick took over for the next three seasons, bringing home another national championship and second-place finish while only suffering three losses.
When Fralick moved on to Bowling Green University, her assistant coach was Pickens — the whiz kid who put the program on the map just a few years prior. Pickens then became the face of the program.
After coaching a few stellar seasons, Pickens and the undefeated, top-seeded Eagles are on their way to an Elite Eight appearance and maybe even another national championship this year.
“I think Kari has done an exceptional job with her staff of doing leadership things to build leadership, to build poise, to build confidence, the whole system,” King said.
“Everything she puts in from preseason to how you go about your business in life, how you schedule things in life, the conditioning, all of those things. There’s no breaks in any of that chain.”
To keep Ashland’s program going strong after this season, the team will continue to recruit talented athletes for Kari Pickens to work her magic with. After all, there’s a whole new team every four or five years.
“It never grows old, giving kids the best experience you can,” King said.
