Change in scenery

More news about: UW-Oshkosh
Mar 19, 2025
Sammi Beyer is UW-Oshkosh's second-leading scorer, but her role doesn't bother her. She has averaged 16.8 points per game over the past five games and 10.8 points per game over the entire season, while coming off the bench in all 31 of the Titans' games.
Photo by Doug Sasse, d3photography.com
 

By Riley Zayas
for D3sports.com

Two summers ago, Kayce Vaile was going through her summer workouts, looking to build on a junior season in which she started 29 games for a UW-Oshkosh team that went two rounds deep in the 2023 NCAA Tournament. 

She found herself training and scrimmaging a high school team on this particular day alongside a talented young guard from Appleton, Wisconsin, just over 100 miles from Vaile’s hometown of Greendale. It didn’t take long for Vaile to take note of the guard’s immense talent. 

“I was like, ‘Wow, this girl is good,’ ” Vaile, a fifth-year senior forward for the Final Four-bound Titans, recalls. “She was competitive, she got after it, and she wanted the ball in her hands.” 

That guard was Sammi Beyer, now UW-Oshkosh’s second-leading scorer heading into the Titans’ national semifinal against Smith College on Thursday. It was the first time the two met, and at that point, it wasn’t clear that their paths would cross in the future. Beyer, a First Team All-State honoree that spring, was committed to play at Division I St. Thomas (Minn.) in the coming fall. Vaile returned to Oshkosh for her senior year, leading the Titans in a Sweet 16 run. 

But by the end of her freshman year, Beyer sought a change in scenery. UW-Oshkosh head coach Brad Fischer had recruited her out of high school, and ultimately, the program’s tradition of success and track record of excellence stood out as the perfect fit. 

“It’s the best decision I’ve ever made,” Beyer said Tuesday. “I took a risk going into the portal, but landed at such an awesome culture and school that is also really close to my home. A lot of these girls on the team are my best friends, and we know when to work and compete, but at the same time, we all love each other off the court.”

When Fischer relayed the news of Beyer’s transfer to Oshkosh to the team, Vaile was amongst the first to reach out to her newest teammate.

“She just said, ‘Welcome to the team. Let me know if you need anything. I can’t wait to get started with you,’ ” Beyer remembers. “She’s been nothing but fun to play with. She brings a lot of energy and has that balance of being a competitor, but off the court is also super funny. I think she embraces the leadership role on this team. You look to her in the locker room if she has something to say. She’s a natural leader.”

Almost everyone in the UW-Oshkosh program is likely to say the same. Vaile’s leadership, from sending that quick text to Beyer upon her commitment to putting an arm around a teammate struggling in some aspect of a game, makes her a crucial component of the Titans’ success.

It didn’t happen overnight, but as she has made her mark over five years in the program, the more her teammates have turned to her, building the trust necessary for any leader to effectively spearhead a charge through something as exhilarating as the NCAA Tournament.

“That’s something I had to grow in the past few years,” Vaile, a 6-1 forward, said. “As a junior, that was the first time I had been in that position, with there being eight or nine seniors the year before. The past two years I’ve had to develop my mental game a lot more to benefit the rest of my team. I want them to look at me with confidence and trust. If they see a calm front from me, I can tell them, ‘We got this. We’re going to get a stop here. We can do this.’ They hold me accountable for what I do as much as I hold them accountable.”

Seeing the role Vaile is playing for the 27-4 Titans this season, both as a vocal leader and the team’s leading scorer at 12.1 points per game, few would guess that over her first two seasons, she never averaged above 10 minutes per game. In fact, she did not even play over 200 minutes in either of her first two years. Talking with Fischer, it is that aspect of Vaile’s college career that makes her recent accomplishments — including three consecutive All-WIAC selections — so impressive. 

“Her first year was the COVID year, and so we only played 11 games, and her second year, when we went to the Elite Eight, she wasn’t even in the rotation by the end of the season,” he said. “After that season, our postseason conversation was about whether she was committed to doing everything she could to be great. 

“We had told her in her first year that we felt like, from a skill set standpoint, could play overseas. After that sophomore year where she didn’t play a ton, it was a hard conversation, to challenge her to figure it out. We felt like she had all the tools and everything was there for her to go get. From that moment on, she has given every ounce in trying to be the best she can be.”

He adds that Vaile might be the most committed player to the program in the 13 years he has spent at the helm of the UW-Oshkosh program. If the coaches want a message to be relayed, Vaile is the one to deliver it. Her pen doesn’t stop moving across the pages of her notebook during the Titans’ film sessions, as she soaks up the tidbits of information on the opponent’s sets, inbounds plays, and personnel. “Fully invested" might not be a strong enough phrase to describe the way Vaile approaches the responsibility of being a go-to contributor. 

“She’s the definition of the anchor of a defense,” Fischer said. “Her experience has been so valuable. She and Sarah [Hardwick] have started together for three years now, so when people get into a post-to-post action, or run a slice at the elbow, or inbounds plays, she and Sarah do a good job of switching and communicating. Kayce sees it happening before it happens. You can tell the difference between her and our freshmen and sophomores at the same position trying to handle the same action. Kayce has it sniffed out as soon as people start to move.” 

Because she has started every game Oshkosh has played since the inception of the 2022-23 season, Vaile was one of the first names brought up when talking about the Titans heading into this season. Evidently for good reason. Fischer’s squad returned three starters from last year’s Sweet 16 appearance in addition to Kate Huml, who scored 17 points off the bench in that narrow 61-59 loss to Smith. 

But in 2024-25, there are new pieces to the puzzle as Oshkosh enters its tournament rematch with Smith. There’s Alex Rondorf, a graduate transfer from Northern Michigan who has started all 31 games. There’s freshman Paige Seckar, an Oshkosh native and the WIAC Newcomer of the Year. And then you have Beyer, who put up 18 points off the bench in Saturday’s sectional final victory over Baldwin Wallace. The trio of newcomers meshed with the veteran returning core early on, and the Titans have built upon that foundation.

“I credit our culture and our players that have been here to take in our new players — whether they be transfers or freshmen — and make them feel welcome,” Fischer said. “We say it all the time in recruiting, I think our players do as good a job as any of being unthreatened by new people. When you bring in someone like Sammi or Alex, they’re taking playing time from players who are coming back. But this team has always been really good at saying, ‘Coach, can they help us win? Can they help us raise the bar? If so, we want them.’” 

Beyer has more than done that this season. In the Titans’ last two meetings against UW-Whitewater, she put up 27 points both times. Against Baldwin Wallace, the 5-6 guard scored 10 straight points in the opening quarter, pushing the lead to 17-2 when it was said and done. She averages 10.8 points per game, shoots 38.5 percent from beyond the arc, has the third-most assists on the team…and yes, she has come off the bench in every one of the Titans’ 31 games. 

“She has come in and fit seamlessly into our program,” Vaile said of Beyer. “She gives us a second wind when she comes in. I think that helps us a lot, especially down the stretch, when she can come in and hit a couple pull-ups or tough shots and get some stops on the defensive end.” 

While it might be unconventional to bring your second-leading scorer off the bench in each game, there is no denying it has worked for the Titans. With Oshkosh’s ample depth, and the time it took for Beyer to get comfortable with the offensive playbook early on, Fischer said it just made sense to arrange the backcourt rotation with Kate Huml and Avery Poole in the starting lineup, and Beyer often first called upon early to midway through the first quarter.

“Avery and Kate, who are also all-conference guards, have played together since sixth grade,” Fischer added. “So those two mesh well, and then Sammi can come in and complement either one. Sammi is an immediate spark offensively. When we need a basket, having the ball in her hands gives me a lot of trust.”

That trust has been earned. Beyer didn’t just pick up the ins and outs of the Oshkosh offensive approach overnight, but as she continued to work at it, her offensive production steadily rose. In the Titans’ first 13 games, Beyer had three nights scoring in double figures. In the 18 games since? 14. 

“It took me a little bit to really get the offense down, and even now, I don’t always make the right decisions, and you’re not always going to make the right cuts or passes,” Beyer said. “But at the end of the day, it came down to my coaches giving me that opportunity and putting the trust in me to keep putting me on the floor and allowing me to learn. I was able to look at them and know they had complete confidence in me.”

Fischer knew what Beyer was capable of well before she stepped on the court at Oshkosh. He watched her develop since her freshman year of high school, playing point guard as a junior on a state runner-up team that also featured a pair of Division I-committed guards, before stepping into a major scoring role as a senior. He knew it was only a matter of time before her playmaking ability garnered attention with the Titans, too. 

“My wife and I went to a game when we were recruiting Olivia Peterson, who is also on our team and from Appleton,” Fischer remembers. “Sammi was playing on the other team. About three minutes into the game, my wife said, ‘We should recruit that one.’ Sammi was the one she was talking about. So for her to be here now, and be growing is so much fun to watch. At that start, as talented as she was, she learned right away about how much she had to learn, not only about how we play, but how you make winning plays and win in college. The last month has been that time for her comfort level to come.”

It has also been the time for the Titans to make their biggest push of the season. At the beginning of the year, every team dreams of walking off its home practice court for the final time with a game still to be played. But only four get to do it, because there are just four still standing by the time this last weekend of the season rolls around. 

Led by Vaile and Beyer, amongst many others, Oshkosh is one of those four. For the fifth-year seniors, especially—Vaile and Allison Forney—the chance to shut down the Kolf Center, having earned every possible practice in the season’s calendar, was one of Fischer’s lasting memories from his team’s final practice before boarding hitting the road to Salem. 

“The Final Four is something I always thought I’d watch, but now being in this position, it’s very cool,” Vaile said. “We get to play for another weekend. And I get to be around the people I love most for another weekend. I think that’s really special.”

Beyer agrees. It seems her first year in Oshkosh has been everything she hoped it would be, plus some. But they haven’t reached the mountaintop just yet. 

“The job is not done and we don’t want to stop here,” she added. “We want to win a national championship. Everybody is locked in on that aspect of things. It’s all about not looking too far ahead, and understanding we have to take care of one day at a time.” 

Riley Zayas is publisher of The scoop on D3 women's hoops, on Substack.