The last time the State University of New York at New Paltz women's basketball team stepped on its home floor was during its second round NCAA Tournament matchup in March, 2020. The Hawks disappointedly fell to Smith College in the final seconds, putting its hopes of another trip to the Sweet 16 to an end.
 
However, as it turned out, a few days later everyone's 2020 season soon came to an abrupt end as COVID-19 shutdown the NCAA Tournament and the country. The result was a two-plus year hiatus from competitive college basketball with the Hawks putting in the work for 19 months leading into a highly anticipated season opener Tuesday against Mount Saint Mary's College.
 
"Honestly, finally being able to be out here and knowing that we have a game [Tuesday] it's been really nice," said junior captain Maddie Gillis. "We finally have something that we can play for, and we need to really take advantage of that and know that this is our time now to move forward and prove in what we're working for."
 
"It felt really good to get back in the gym and have games on the calendar to really look forward to," added fellow junior captain Lexi Van Vorst. "It really puts a sense of urgency in every drill we do every single day, and it makes us have to be competitive every day. We can't make mistakes over and over again, and it feels really good to have that sense of urgency and competition back in the gym."
 
 
Gillis and Van Vorst are two of eight returning players from SUNY New Paltz's 2020 run. Gillis, Van Vorst, Cassidy Deaver and Olivia Badura are four Hawks who saw the most minutes during the 2019-20 season, but all eight players have stepped up into larger leadership roles within the program over the course of the last year-plus, learning from the most successful senior class ever to play for coach Jamie Seward's program. The four graduating seniors of the 2020 class: Maddie Van Pelt, Paige Niemeyer, Marion Dietz and Philesha Teape, won more games than any other player to ever suit up in the orange and blue and the left a mark on the then freshman class, who quickly become the eldest statesmen on an inexperienced squad. 
 
"You couldn't have a better group to learn from, and honestly you couldn't have had a more eager group to learn," said Seward who enters his 15th season at the head of SUNY New Paltz's women's basketball program. "They picked up on a lot of those things and they know that last year in December, January, we were struggling. It might have looked good after the fact, like you were 25-4 when were you struggling? But it wasn't going in the way we were hoping it was going to go and it's always that way. You hope it's going to go well, and when it doesn't it's like, 'ok this is where we are and how do we move forward from here?' I do think they understand that, and we've had so long to talk about things like that without having the potential stress of an actual season. It gave them a chance to grow in that way and learn that it is a process."
 
Seward brought in another large and talented group in 2021 who are still eager to play its first season of college basketball. The sophomore class is made up of guard/forward Brianna Fitzgerald, Madison Mullman, guards Jenny Walton, Julia Sabatino and forward Abby Korzekwinski. Joining the second-year class is 6-foot guard/forward transfer Erin Cooney who spent last season at Adelphi University. All six will be joined by lone freshman Morgan Hammell, as they all will be playing in their first college basketball action of their careers this season. 
With new faces on the floor, playing together for the first time against opposition not themselves, Seward hopes his team can figure out how to utilize each other's strengths and play together on the court.
 
"I hope to see them just figuring out how to play with each other, helping each other and making each other look good, passing the ball at the right time to the right people, moving and giving the right people room to operate and doing the things that individually they do well," Seward said. "I think they're learning how to operate and function as a team in terms of the confrontation and learning how to hold one another to a standard they've set for this team. As far as the basketball part of that cohesion, that's going to come and it's only going to come from playing. The more we play the more those things will sort itself out, but I'm just looking for them to work on that and look like they're moving toward a more cohesive basketball team."
 
The Hawks left the 2019-20 season at 25-4 overall after going 17-1 in SUNYAC play. They boasted one of the best defenses in the country that season, allowing just 54.1 points per game and kept teams less than 37 percent shooting from the field, including just 26 percent from the perimeter and caused nearly 25 turnovers per game.
 
Although most of SUNY New Paltz's production graduated with that coveted senior class, which included an All-American honorable mention selection in Van Pelt and All-SUNYAC honorees in Dietz and Niemeyer, the Hawks hope to replicate the same effort defensively.
 
"What's really going to help us early in the season is shocking people with our intensity both offensively and defensively," said Van Vorst. "I think we have a lot of athleticism on this team and we have a lot of opportunities to create some chaos on defense and we also have a lot of scorers on this team, so they're going to have to guard all five people on the court, which makes us a really hard team to defend."
 
Van Vorst saw action in 28 of 29 games played during her freshman season, totaling 356 minutes, and scoring 117 points. Her best game came against Alfred University when she went off for a career-high 18 points after going 5-for-11 from 3-point range. The East Greenbush, NY native is slated for a bigger role heading into her second season, hoping to replicate and sustain the same production she had against the Saxons.
 
"This team has a ton of talent on it," she said. "We need to harness everyone's individual talent and get some chemistry and learn how to play as a team to get as far as we've had in the past and beyond that. We come in every day and break the huddle with the words "champions" that's our goal every year and we expect nothing less."
 
Gillis has the most experience on the court out of the returners for SUNY New Paltz, totaling nine starts in 29 games played. The Levittown, NY native saw her role increase as the season wore on as a freshman, as she finished the season averaging nearly six points, five rebounds and two assist per game. In the postseason, Gillis was one of the most consistent players offensively, totaling double figures in SUNY New Paltz's last three playoff games against Cortland, Husson and Smith, shooting nearly 40 percent, while pulling down 18 boards. 
Gillis will be pivotal in the team's offense this season. Often times toward the end of her first season, she was responsible for ball-handling duties allowing Niemeyer and Dietz more flexibility off the ball.
 
"If you'd watch the last four or five games of the year, Maddie Gillis often initiated our offense and that allowed us to utilize Paige and or Marion in a more aggressive, offensive way. I think she naturally plays that way," Seward said. "She's comfortable with the ball in her hands, but we want to utilize her as a driving force of our offense too, so we're going to need to figure out who is going to do that, and we have a number of options. We only have a couple of players who can't handle the ball. We probably have 12, 13, 14 kids who can handle the ball, so we have to figure out which ones have the personality to take ownership of the team and be able to understand what we're doing at a given time and then be able to have the confidence and the voice to get us organized."
 
Deaver finished her first year with 11 starts and was vital in the team's defensive prowess. In 11 starts and 27 games played, she finished with four blocks and 19 steals on the year to go along with her 81 points scored. Along with her abilities defensively, she'll be asked to be more of a contributor offensively as well.
 
For the first-year players, Fitzgerald will see heavy minutes. In early season scrimmages, the Island Trees High alum already flashed her athleticism and smooth finishing in transition, but an early surprise has been Sabatino who will fight for early minutes in Seward's rotation at point guard.
 
"I think very highly of Julia Sabatino. She just has a really strong work ethic and is a highly competitive kid and a phenomenal athlete," Seward said. "She's just developed over the course of last year and this year in terms of her skills so much. She's a long way away from being a floor general, but because of the confidence we have in her, and when I say we I don't just mean me and [assistant] coach [Darren] Jackson, but even the older players. Even though she doesn't know what she's doing at times, they just want to play with her because she makes things happen on both ends of the floor and she's just so accountable. Even when she makes mistakes there's no hiding from it. I think she has a lot of those characteristics from a personality standpoint and a skill standpoint. It is just a matter of experience, learning the game through experience to learn how to run team and know what we need at any given time."
 
Tuesday marks the Hawks' first game in nearly two years, stepping onto the same floor they left in 2020 with their postseason goals unfinished. Despite the new personnel, the standards have remained the same in attaining a SUNYAC title, which what would be the program's third consecutive, and a deep run in the NCAA Tournament. The team has appeared in the Sweet 16 twice in the last four seasons but has yet to break into the Elite Eight. This group hopes to make that next leap.
 
"Being champions is always our standard," Gillis said. "We always want to win. We're super competitive and that's our goal every day to go out and compete. All of us freshmen moving forward, we've just instilled that since the beginning and we're looking forward to go out and win this year."
 
SUNY New Paltz played two preseason scrimmages against St. Rose and SUNY Purchase with uneven results but have built off both performances. Seward liked how the team responded in the practices leading into Tuesday's matchup against Mount Saint Mary's College, who will be a tough day one test.
 
"We really don't know who we are at this point. We don't know what our identity is. We have some ideas of what we want to be, but we're not quite those things right now," Seward said. "The biggest thing is that we have to figure out how to win… They don't understand the day-to-day urgency, the play-to-play urgency when we talk about playing March possessions. You can't start playing March possessions when the calendar turns or when it becomes postseason play because you won't get there." 
SUNY New Paltz first test will come against a solid Knights team who return three fifth-year seniors from a group that finished 20-6 during the 2019-20 season and are under the guidance of second-year coach Colleen Ames a former Hawk who spent two seasons playing under Seward and a season as an assistant coach.
 
"Colleen has not surprisingly done a great job, and in an obviously tremendously difficult situation coming into your first head coaching job and having to take a complete break for a year," Seward said. "She's done a great job of maintaining everything in that team. They had a couple injuries her first season and they won anyway. They are going to be a very tough team to open the season against with. They have a tremendous amount of experience and a lot of really talented players, and I know they will be very well coached. At this point in time, I'm just trying to prepare for a game, so we don't get blown out of our own gym in the first game of the season."
 
Ames transferred to SUNY New Paltz from Division II St. Thomas Aquinas ahead of the 2014-15 season and helped the Hawks to a SUNYAC Championship as a senior in 2016. She played in every game she suited up for the Hawks and was notable for her toughness both on the defensive and offensive end, keen on drawing charges for SUNY New Paltz defensively.
 
"I talk about it all the time with my players, especially because we're going up against New Paltz [Tuesday]. I tell them how it meant so much to play for a program that had these high standards. Not just the women's basketball team, but the department as a whole," Ames said. "Every team is competing for SUNYAC Championships, and I think playing at New Paltz really taught me what it really meant to be a champion. There's that little piece of something that you can't really describe with a word, of what it takes to win and what it takes to win at the highest level. Being at New Paltz really taught me that and coming to the Skyline [I hope to] influence that into my players. Take what I learn from New Paltz and bring it here. It's obviously a different conference, different style of play, but being a champion is pretty uniform across the board of what it takes. I think being at New Paltz taught me how to get it out of my girls."
 
Although it's the first matchup between coaches, Seward knows an Ames-led team will likely embody the same tenacity she played with when she laced up in the Hawk Center.
 
"They're probably going to be a little bit ornery and a little bit nasty — and I mean that in the most complimentary way," Seward said. "They're going to let it fly from the perimeter and they're going to be aggressive. That's how she always played. She was aggressive, she was loud, she was nasty, and she wanted to win. I'm sure if you're going to spend any amount of time around her you better be like that too or it's not going to go so well. It's going to be a really difficult task to open the season with a team of that caliber. It will be fun at some point to watch her play over the course of the rest of the season and see them do some great things that I'm really confident they're going to be able to do this year." 
When hearing what Seward expected from her team, Ames was proud to take the compliment and hopes to continue instilling the same toughness she embodied as a player in the Hawks program.
 
"We had a film session yesterday and we've had two scrimmages so far and both of the coaches told me that the way we play, we play so tough. But I said to the girls right away, I don't think you play tough at all. I think you're really soft," she said. "I think that my high standard of toughness and "nastiness" is kind of what makes us that way. Why people think we're so tough and why we play so hard, because it's never enough for us. We can always give a little bit more." 
 
Ames took over the Knights program ahead of the 2019-20 season after spending the season prior as the interim head coach at Clarkson University. Mount Saint Mary's finished with its third consecutive 20-win season and reached the Skyline Conference semifinal under the guidance of Ames.
 
Last year, the Knights were restricted to just a week of small group practices prior to Thanksgiving break before shutting down due to COVID-19. Tuesday's game will also serve as the opener for them as well, with the team eager to play in their first competition after a long hiatus. Ironically, for Ames she returns to the same place she called home.
 
"For me, it obviously means something getting back out there, especially playing against Jamie. He really taught me what competition means and what it means to be a competitor. To me, it means a lot," Ames said. "For the girls, it's just another game. It's exciting to get back out there but also exciting to play against a team that is getting national votes. This opportunity to play against them this early in the season, the girls are really excited to get back out there." 
 
"If I know anything about Jamie, I know they are going to play tough," Ames added. "They're going to be really well coached and disciplined. He does such a good job with them, and I know that we have to come out and play our best game and we'll have to compete the entire time. No breaks or minutes off. I know we have to play a high I.Q. style game and we need to make sure we're on top of it going into [Tuesday]."
 
Ames set a tough opening schedule for her group, as they take on No. 24 George Fox two days after their matchup with SUNY New Paltz. However the results end up, she hopes her team can improve to be playing at their peak come March, as echoed by Seward.
 
"Playing under him and coaching under him, I was taught how to teach the game to my players," Ames said. "It's not about putting in 100 sets or putting in this ridiculously flashy defense, it's about teaching the game and getting them to understand concepts so at the end of the day, when the defense knows your sets and the defense stops you of what you want to do, you know how to play basketball to get around what they're trying to do. Then defensively, you know how to get a stop because you know how the game works and you understand what the other team is trying to accomplish. That's pretty much how he taught me how to be a good coach, was teaching the kids the fundamentals, going back to the basics and setting a foundation of how to be successful early so at the end of the season, you're playing your best basketball."
 
The Hawks and Knights are set to tip-off their respective season openers at 6 p.m. in the Hawk Center.

Hawks 2021-22 Season Preview Video featuring Maddie Gillis & Lexi Van Vorst


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