Just 12 months ago, the Quincy University women’s basketball team found itself riding high in the Great Lakes Valley Conference. The Lady Hawks had defied the odds and emerged from the trenches of a tough season to claim the GLVC Championship – their first title in over 10 years. Behind upperclassmen leadership, unbreakable chemistry, and a hooked-in coach that had been on the journey for years, they worked as a machine of grit and togetherness. The Quincy fanbase rode their coattails, showing up to support the Lady Hawks by packing Pepsi Arena to the brim week in, week out, awkwardly booming their cheers and chants long after the final buzzer sounded.

But, as they were soon to find out, success is a fleeting moment in time.

That championship team was short-lived. Former coach Courtney Boyd left to coach at Valparaiso University a Division I team in the Missouri Valley Conference. Boyd decided to take a position with Valpo, and it wasn’t long before a handful of starters, bench players, and team captains joined the transfer portal. By the time it was time to start this year, the old dominant Quincy team was hardly recognizable.

The outcome was a rude awakening.  

From the mountain top of being the champs, the Lady Hawks sunk toward the bottom of the GLVC standings that just came out the third week of October.

Coach Ali Schwagmeyer-Belger had a presence when she walked into the gym at the beginning of the year. A Quincy University alumni that had a great career at Quincy and over seas, Schwagmeyer-Belger represented a thing new in Quincy, a modern mindset. Player development, analytics, and a high-octane, motion-based offense that made you think that was all she did. But even more importantly, however, she instilled belief – something the players were needing.

“You can see that she’s young, but she knows the game,” junior guard Blair Eftink said. “Coach Schwagmeyer-Belger treats us as equals. She’s doing things the right way with us as players, and as a team.”

Schwagmeyer-Belger began rebuilding from the ground up and did so without much subtlety. The practice was grueling and the expectations were clear. The freshmen, and there were a lot of them, were told they would not be filling holes but building a new foundation for afterwards. Morgan wanted them to identify as the underdogs, to play with the same ferocity that had made Quincy a champion in the past.

A glimpse of what is possible is beginning to show at practice. The Lady Hawks are starting to put things together like championship teams of the past. And while the standings have Quincy at the bottom or near it, that doesn’t stop the women from proving everybody wrong.

Players who are coached by Coach Schwagmeyer-Belger are routinely reminded of a motto that they see in the locker room:

“Championships aren’t won once – they’re earned every day.”

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