Winning Ways at Clarke – in the Land of Clark
Women's basketball team in Dubuque builds on the success that led to a national championship last season
When it comes to women's basketball in Iowa right now, it's hard to believe Clarke is flying under the radar despite unprecedented success.
No, really. Clarke is kind of unknown.
Really.
Because that's Clarke. With an e. You were maybe thinking of some other Clark?
Easy mistake.
This Clarke, however, deserves a little attention thrown its way, too. Clarke University, in Dubuque, is the reigning NAIA national champion and the No. 4-ranked Pride are off to an 18-1 start this season.
Ninety minutes north of the juggernaut in Iowa City, Clarke is a different kind of basketball power. The private Catholic school with an enrollment of 1,200 students has earned a spot in the NAIA tournament for five consecutive seasons, including two Elite Eight spots prior to the national title.
And to start this season, the Pride got a taste of the big time by opening their season with an exhibition against the NCAA runner-up Hawkeyes at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. Most NCAA Division I teams start their seasons with an exhibition game against a smaller school that doesn’t count on either team’s record. Iowa did as expected, handily defeating Clarke 122-49.
“We want the experience at that level and I’m sure a team like Iowa wants a confidence booster with an opportunity to compete against someone from a smaller level to work out some kinks,” said Clarke Coach Adam Hocking, whose team played a similar exhibition at Stanford in 2021, when the Cardinal were coming off an NCAA championship. “My message for the team was for them to take it all in and that they had earned the right to be there.”
The Pride made the trip to Iowa City that morning. They spent time with Iowa Coach Lisa Bluder, who took questions and gave them a pep talk, and got a tour of the school’s athletic facilities.
“The whole day was special,” said Clarke senior Nicole McDermott, a senior from Cascade. “They did a really good job of making it a big deal for us even though for them it probably wasn’t.”
That other Clark, Caitlin, scored 24 points in the game.
“She didn’t get a logo 3 (pointer) against us, so there was that,” said McDermott, a guard who went up against sharp-shooting Clark, the reigning national player of the year, in that game.
.
Three is also a big number for Clarke, the school, which recruits heavily in the tri-state area of Iowa and neighboring Illinois and Wisconsin.
“We want to keep the kids who are in our own backyard,” Hocking said. “The players who have been successful for us have come from small, local schools, places like East Dubuque, Bellevue, Cascade.”
Clarke wants a certain kind of student-athlete, Hocking said, one who balances athletics, academics and character. Last year, the Pride were an NAIA scholar team with a team GPA of 3.7.
“They know life is about more than basketball,” he said.
While the state’s women’s NCAA Division I teams get most of the attention, the NAIA has a decidedly Iowa look at the top this season. Sioux Center’s Dordt is No. 2 in the rankings, Sioux City’s Briar Cliff is No. 9 while Grand View of Des Moines is No. 23. The national tournament will be in Sioux City March 21-26.
For Clarke, continuing its string of success was a daunting challenge for this season. Four starters from the title team graduated, and head coach Courtney Boyd, a native of Keokuk, left to become head coach at NCAA Division II Quincy (Ill.) University.
Hocking, who had been a Clarke assistant for eight years, took over. Hocking knows the college scene in Dubuque well as an alumnus of the University of Dubuque. He uses the draw of other colleges in Dubuque – Loras, the University of Dubuque, Emmaus Bible College and a campus of North Iowa Community College – as part of his pitch.
“I tell my recruits we have the best of both worlds here in Dubuque,” Hocking said. “You can get a big-school feel because there are so many college students here in town but you also get that small-school feel.”
All the change coming into the season didn’t slow down the Pride. Clarke returned all-conference player McDermott, who leads the team in scoring (17.3 points per game) and rebounding (9.6) despite being a 5-foot 7-inch guard.
McDermott said the team has spent a lot of time working on their relationships on and off the court, which helped in winning the championship and to adjust to this season’s changes.
“We had a lot of girls from last year step up and take a bigger leadership role and we brought in some transfers,” she said. “It just clicked right away, we were all on the same page about how we wanted the season to go.”
She also credits the arrival of assistant coach Haley Froelich, who often reminds the team how good they are and to not take winning for granted.
Hocking and Froelich got a sense of the team’s unity as soon as Froelich came to town. The coaches met for a burger at a local spot, and soon found they had some company.
“We were sitting there for maybe 2 minutes when in walks our entire basketball team, all 20 of them,” Hocking said. “I said, ‘What the heck are you doing here?’ and they said, ‘Coach, it’s trivia night. That’s what we’re doing.”
The trivia team doesn’t do nearly as well as the basketball team, but that’s fine with McDermott. Her basketball experience at Clarke has given her success and memories to last a lifetime.
“For me in four years to be able to go out to California and play Stanford with players now in the WNBA and then go to Iowa and have the same situation, that’s really special,” she said. “We’re in Dubuque, Iowa, we’re a small university and the basketball program here allowed me to play against two of the top teams in the country.”
And there’s nothing trivial about that.
Jane Burns is a former sports and features writer for the Des Moines Register, as well as other publications and websites. Over the course of her career she’s covered pretty much everything, which is why her as-yet-to-be-written memoir will be called “Cheese And Basketball: Stories From A Reporter Who Has Covered Everything.”
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