If you’re planning to travel with our Ashland Eagles on their tournament run, we want to talk to you. Drop us a line at news@ashlandsource.com or fill out this quick form.
ASHLAND — It’s easy to fall in love with a sports team, especially when they’re winning.
But Ashland University’s women’s basketball program has something special in the thousands of fans that show up faithfully to cheer on their Eagles at Kates Gymnasium.
Kates has a maximum capacity of 2,000 spectators for basketball. During the 2022-23 season, the women’s basketball team brought an average of 1,134 people to each home game, including a sellout on March 13 against Grand Valley State, according to the game’s box score stats.
GALLERY: Ashland University Regional Championship
By comparison, the men’s team, with a winning record of 22-10 this last season, brought an average of 609 people to each home game.
“It’s not every school that can say they have near-sellout crowds for the women’s basketball team,” said Barb Hendrix, a diehard fan that has only missed one home game this season.
The AU women’s basketball team is made up of young women from all over Ohio and some from out of state. Only one, Sophia Niese, hails from Richland County.
If you’re planning to travel with our Ashland Eagles on their tournament run, we want to talk to you. Drop us a line at news@ashlandsource.com or fill out this quick form.
So what makes this team so watchable?
Hendrix sits in the same seat, next to the same friend — Jean Stahl — at every game, something she’s done for more than a decade. She is one of the fans that starts the frequent, deafening “AU” chants in the stands during the games.
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“We get a lot of support in all our sports. But the women’s basketball team definitely has a bigger fanbase,” said Dusty Sloan, the school’s director of athletic communications. Sloan worked for the Times-Gazette in the late 1990s covering sports.
“Even then, it was pretty good, but certainly not like it is now,” he said.
The No. 1 squad has a perfect, 34-0 record. They play the eight-seeded UT Tyler, in St. Joseph, Mo. on March 20 as part of the NCAA Division II quarterfinals.
The women’s basketball team is fun to watch, Hendrix said, adding the athletes are electric whether on or off the floor.
“(Sam) Chable is just as exciting on the floor as she is on the bench,” Hendrix said.
The team voted Chable team captain. Hendrix said it’s easy to know why when she sees Chable as the first player to high five her teammates in timeouts.
GALLERY: Ashland University Women’s Basketball defeats Hillsdale College 83-59
“So it’s the camaraderie they have, the faith that they show … they’re just good-rounded players and athletes,” she said.
Howard Glick, another diehard fan of the women’s basketball team, said the Eagles definitely have a tight bond — and their joy for playing the game is contagious. It’s that zeal displayed on the court that has kept him coming back to his reserved seat each season since the 1980s.
A couple years ago, Glick and his wife traveled to watch a matchup against Grand Valley State. Before the game, they met with friends who happen to be fans of the opposing team at a restaurant, and the couples talked basketball. At the end of the meetup, his friend made a prediction.
“‘We’re gonna kick your ass,’” Glick said, remembering the conversation.
At half, the Eagles were up by 25 points. Glick ran into the friend’s wife at the concessions.
“She told me, ‘You know, I’ve never seen a team play with as much joy as your team plays with.’ And they do — they play with an unbridled amount of joy,” Glick said.
Yet joy and camaraderie alone don’t win games.
Glick said the team has been unbeatable because of the program the coaching staff has built. He said the program changed dramatically when high-scoring head coach Kari Pickens led the team to its first national championship bid in 2012 and its first title in 2013.
She replaced Robyn Fralick in 2018 after a stint as the team’s assistant and associate head coach.
Hendrix said Sue Ramsey, head coach for the women’s basketball team from 1995-2015, built the program that fans enjoy watching today by adopting the mantra “transforming young women’s lives” — a philosophy that, years later, Pickens adopted for her team.
“I mean, (Sue Ramsey) recruited Kari. And when she recruited Kari, Kari put us on the map,” Hendrix said.
Neither Hendrix nor Glick plan to travel with the team to Missouri. But you can bet they’ll be watching and cheering them on from Ashland.
“I’ll be watching on my iPad,” Hendrix said with a chuckle.
Should the Eagles win on Monday, March 20, against Tyler, Texas, they would advance to the semifinals on March 22, also play in St. Joseph, Missouri.
If the Eagles win that game, the championship game will be played in Dallas, Texas on April 1.
