NDMU basketball team dances into NCAA DIII tournament

The Notre Dame of Maryland University women’s basketball team is going dancing, heralding a new era for the athletics program at the North Baltimore school.

The university hosted a parade and send-off for the team March 1 after NDMU captured its first Colonial States Athletic Conference basketball championship Feb. 25, routing Clarks Summit University, 83-57, to clinch an NCAA tournament berth.

“This is definitely a sign of big things for our athletic program,” Coach Kalin Wynn said. “We’ve sort of been known as that little all-women’s school from Baltimore, but we’re looking to make some national news now.”

Dr. Ashley Hodges, the NDMU director of athletics since July 2021, said the entire campus is enthused by the success of the basketball team.

“We’re very proud of them,” Hodges said. “It’s exciting for the future of our overall program, and it’s exciting for our team to go to Connecticut and represent us at the highest level. Coach Kalin took a team that hadn’t had much success and turned them into winners. They’ve really battled all season.”

The Gators face Trinity College (22-5) in the opening round of the NCAA tournament March 3, 6:30 p.m., in Hartford, Conn. The team last made the tournament in the 2006-07 season.

After completing a 17-1 record in the 10-team CSAC, the Gators rolled through the conference tournament, earning their seventh straight victory and bringing their overall season record to an impressive 23-4.

Ayana Brim, a 5-foot-7 senior forward from Our Lady of Mount Carmel School in Essex, was named the CSAC tournament most valuable player after scoring 19 points in the title game. Kori People, a 5-foot-5 junior guard, led the teams with 24 points and Alexis Jones, a 5-foot-10 freshman forward, added 13 points in the championship.

People, from Central High in Washington, D.C., leads the team in scoring this season, averaging 18 points and 5.3 rebounds a game. She also has a team-leading 78 steals.

Alexis Durham, from Plumas Lake, Calif., has averaged 14.7 points and 5.6 rebounds a game and has a nation-leading 166 assists.

Durham and People were both selected to the all-CSAC first team.

Daija Fitchett, a graduate student from Towson High School, rounds out the double-figure scoring average players for NDMU with 10 points and 10.7 rebounds per game averages.  She was named the all-CSAC second team.

Other Baltimore-area players on the team are Chantel Curry (Fallston) and Elena Rodriguez (Mount Carmel).

Wynn, a 1985 Morgan State graduate, has led the team since taking over as interim coach in 2019. He served as an assistant coach the previous two seasons. He was named the CSAC Coach of the Year for the second straight season.

He said that he and Assistant Coach Candice Hendricks stepped up NDMU’s basketball recruiting two years ago and it paid off when the team nearly won a CSAC title last season.

“The team really got that championship taste last season, and dedicated themselves to winning it this season,” Wynn said. “This championship is huge for us. We haven’t had much success in the CSAC, and frankly were habitual cellar dwellers.”

It’s been a whirlwind past several months for the NDMU athletic department after the school announced in September that it was adding full-time male students to its rolls in the fall of 2023 after serving for more than 127 years as a primarily all-women’s college.

The women’s basketball team joined the women’s lacrosse and volleyball teams as recent teams to capture CSAC championships.

“I think the basketball team’s success as well as the recent successes of our softball, volleyball and lacrosse teams sets us up as a destination program,” Hodges said. “It shows that you can go to a small school like ours and have success as an athlete.”

The school is adding men’s basketball, cross country and soccer teams next academic year, and already has coaching staffs in place for those sports.

Email Gerry Jackson at gjackson@CatholicReview.org

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