Olivia Voskuil, Courteney Barnes, Natalee Kott and Kenedy Schoonveld are just some of the members of Hope coach Brian Morehouse's senior class. Hope athletics images by Lynn Powe; D3sports.com photo illustration

By Ryan Scott
D3hoops.com

A team of destiny? Not if COVID has anything to say about it. There are 32 teams and coaches who will tell you they could’ve won the 2020 national championship if only they’d gotten a chance to play the games. There’s 128 teams who would’ve been alive for this year’s title on March 8, when the brackets were supposed to be announced.

Losing a basketball championship pales in comparison to the loss of life and health and security we’ve seen over the past 12 months, but it’s not nothing. It’s a real loss – the culmination of years and years of hard work, dedication, and effort. We don’t know who would’ve won the titles in 2020 or 2021 – that’s never a sure thing – we do know, though, the Hope College women would’ve been favorites both years.

Brian Morehouse put together an historic group of players – nine seniors, who were 29-0 last year, when things shut down, and remain unchallenged so far this season. “Some of these players I’ve known literally since they were born, others since fourth or fifth grade,” says Morehouse with a sense of awe in his voice. “I remember five of them came to one game, during recruiting, and they spent the game sitting together, talking, getting to know one another. I know they were saying to each other, ‘we want to win one of those banners,’ and just looking at them, together, you knew it was a special group.”

If you talk to anyone who knows him, Morehouse will be described as selfless. He puts his heart and soul into making his players better and their success – not just on the court, but in life – is his ultimate aim. “I’m far more proud of the way they live their lives,” he says, “than anything they could do in practice.”

Still, Morehouse himself has missed out on about as good a chance as a coach could hope for to extend his legacy. He has a national title, but only six coaches in Division III women’s basketball have more than one. Despite putting together the kind of roster more than capable of doing it – rare, even for perennial contenders like Hope – he’ll have to wait if he’s going to win another and join such elite company.

John Baines, Elmhurst’s men’s coach, summed it up well as he reflected on COVID’s untimely end to his team’s best-ever season in 2020, “I’ve been doing this for 20-some years. It’s really hard to get a team good, to get them playing at their best at the end of the year, to stay healthy. My heart breaks for my players, but this is also really disappointing for me personally.”

It’s not just about wins or accolades, though. For nearly every coach it’s about seeing their players, their team reach the heights of their potential. That’s success for a coach: to get the very best out of what they’re given. Not having that opportunity is both personally and professionally difficult.

“I went through a pretty textbook cycle of grief,” says Morehouse. “With the anger and denial and all that. I’ve dealt with it really well on some days and really poorly on other days. I’ve been to Final Fours. I’ve won and I’ve lost. I really wanted that experience for our players, I wanted it for my family, as a culmination of all those days I’m not around. It’s difficult to really have no ending. There’s no loss to mourn and no victory to celebrate.”

While the ultimate win will elude this particular group of Hope players, there have been a lot of wins along the way. This year’s squad returns more than 90% of the minutes from a team that was ranked No. 1 and undefeated in 2020. There are very good teams and there are great teams, despite not being able to prove it on the court, the 2021 version of Hope women’s basketball is certainly great.

“Our coaches do a good job of keeping our circle tight,” notes senior All-American Kenedy Schoonveld, “We don’t pay too much attention to outside rankings and what other people are saying about our team, but what we have is rare and it’s been really cool to be a part of that the last two years.”

Adds Olivia Voskuil, a fellow senior and four-year starter for the Flying Dutch, “It is rare – and we do have a sense of that, that what we have is something special.”

“This senior class is really unique,” adds their coach. “Typically seniors quit getting better. There’s a jump after freshman year and after sophomore year, but there has been marked improvement by this senior class, which is highly unusual.”

Voskuil and Schoonveld have been playing together since ninth grade and can’t even imagine basketball without each other at this point. The nine seniors have developed an incredible level of chemistry, essentially for winning basketball. Morehouse observes, “This team is especially good at accepting that we don’t all have to be great at the same things. We’re all going to have to give up a little individually for us to get more as a whole group.”

Morehouse credits the 30-point shellacking at the hands of Wartburg in the 2019 NCAA Tournament for cementing this team-focused resolve. “We had to decide, that day, whether we’d try to do everything ourselves, individually, or decide to be better together.”

They haven’t lost since.

Hope is incredibly deep, with little drop off from the sixth or even 12th players off the bench. They excel at scoring the basketball efficiently and in many different ways. Morehouse credits a lot of hard work – video preparation and scouting – with massive first quarter leads typical for Hope, even against the toughest competition. In spite of all that, though, defense may be Hope’s most underrated skill, as Grove City found out in the first round of the 2020 NCAA Tournament.

Chelle Fuss’s squad had put together an historic season of its own, going 25-3 and shattering records, until they ran into a buzzsaw. The final score was Hope 69, Grove City 18. “It’s never fun when you only score 18,” says Fuss. “But we got to be treated like Hope treats opponents – that whole town was warm and welcoming and respectful. They are absolutely the No. 1 team; there are a lot of things that hit you in the face, but it was a privilege to play them and an experience we’ll never forget.”

Fuss has eight seniors of her own who, like Hope, will get to play for a conference title, but not test themselves in the NCAAs. Also like Hope, there’s little chance any of her seniors will be able to use the extra year of eligibility. As she says, “Division III is a great model and I love it, but the extra year just doesn’t work for us, when the players have to pay their own way.”

Still, Grove City learned a lot from Hope about what it takes to be at the top. Fuss says, “Brian Morehouse is an unbelievable coach and a great recruiter; they do everything right there. They should absolutely be considered among the best teams. Hope may not have gotten to prove to the world how good they are, but they are absolutely worth all the hype they’re getting.”

Fuss, whose teams had to go against national championship-caliber Thomas More squads two or three times each season for most of the past decade, has some knowledge base from which to make that statement. She and her team also represent the many, many schools who’ve worked so hard for a chance at success that just won’t happen.

Winning basketball is also more than just hitting shots and making plays. There’s a lot of off-court work essential to building trust, chemistry, and leadership – all intangible keys to playing well on the court. Morehouse is pretty demanding of the players at Hope. He’s got high expectations for them, which includes, sometimes, homework geared towards personal growth and development.

Part of that preparation is a legacy paper, required of seniors. “You should read these things,” says Morehouse. “I’ll be in my office bawling about what our seniors dream of leaving behind at Hope College.” Hope players also have to do homework on excellence. “We had them do research on our previous Final Four teams, interview players from those teams, and then make a presentation on what they learned.”

Voskuil says of Morehouse: “He is full of knowledge, basketball knowledge and outside the court. People want to look at the schemes he’s drawing up or the plays he has us run, but I think the work he has us do off the court has been just as transformational as what we’ve done on the court.”

In the grand scheme of things, it’ll always be a debate as to where this particular incarnation of Hope basketball fits among the all-time greats. Despite being cliché, it is ultimately more than just wins and losses and championships. Schoonveld was able to eloquently put everything from this odd, disappointing COVID period into perspective:

“Everybody that comes to Hope wants to win, because Coach Mo has built a winning mentality and the expectation when you come here is to win. There is a huge sense of disappointment that we’re not going to get to do that, for the second year in a row. But, if I look back on my four years, I feel like I’ve grown a lot. I feel really grateful and really blessed to be a part of this group of people, regardless of COVID and what it’s taken away – the relationships I’ve built, and the leadership skills I’ve gained, and the work ethic skills that I’ve gained are unmatched in comparison. These are things I’ll take with me for the rest of my life. I look back and I think I’m just so grateful for my experience.”