Couch: Great Lakes Christian College's women's basketball team has triumphed over history and adversity this season

LANSING – That Great Lakes Christian College’s women’s basketball team won its first regional title ever this season is a fairly remarkable story on its own, given the program’s bleak history.

How it happened, though, and the people who’ve made it happen — and what they’ve had to overcome — is a testament to character, to friendships, to pain tolerance, to the difference coaching can make, and to stick-to-itiveness.

A team that won just seven games last season and two the year before that, and was once only known for a 91-1 loss eight years ago, has won 15 games this season. Its most recent win, coming back from 19 points down in the second quarter on the road in the regional final, has the Crusaders heading to the National Christian Colleges Athletic Association Division II national tournament this week in Minnesota.

Great Lakes, whose campus is in west Lansing, is the No. 6 seed, beginning play at 4 o’clock (ET) Thursday against Toccoa Falls College (Georgia) at Crown College, which is about a half-hour from Minneapolis.

“I think it’s probably the best feeling in the world,” junior guard Leah Yanko said of the program’s turnaround.

The collection of people behind this rise and the adversity they’ve faced, individually and collectively, has made it all the more meaningful.

'I think this is his outlet'

When Ray Kimball took over the Great Lakes program last May, he didn’t expect to be watching the team’s biggest games on a live stream from his recliner in his living room, pacing the house instead of the court.

Kimball, known best for building Portland High School’s girls program into a power during a 10-year run a decade ago, had to step away in October to deal with a heart ailment stemming from a heart attack he suffered years ago while coaching at Portland.

“Things had gone so smoothly (this season), when I got clearance to return, I didn’t want to rock the boat,” Kimball said.

So he came back in more of a mentoring role, handling scouting reports and recruiting. Two weeks ago, he stepped away again. This time, it’s his wife Jan who is dealing with a serious diagnosis — one of those unfair breaks in life, as Kimball sees it. He feels complete fine physically — after decades of drinking beer and making questionable dietary decisions and having heart issues — while his wife, who’s always taken care of herself, is struggling.

When the Crusaders beat Grand Rapids’ Kuyper College in the regional final on March 2, the team dedicated the win to Kimball.

“Right now, I think this is his outlet,” said Katy Shannon, the team’s acting head coach. “I think that's what made the win even more special is that we brought home that banner for him when he couldn't be with us.”

Kimball did a couple things to set the Crusaders up for long-term success this season. He put together a bear of a schedule — including a game at NCAA Division I Purdue Fort Wayne — games that came with paydays for the program, even if not immediate payoff on the scoreboard. It took a while for the players to appreciate that.

“It was hard,” Yanko said. “Like, ‘We don’t want to do this.’ … But when it came to the second semester and we were playing people in our region and in our conference, it was way easier. (That schedule) made us a lot better.”

Kimball also made two good assistant coaching hires — Shannon and McKenzie Skiendziel.

Close friends, one coaching the other

If Shannon’s name is familiar, she played at Lansing Catholic High School, graduating in 2018, before playing collegiately at Adrian College. She’ll take over the Great Lakes head coaching job on a permanent basis after the season.

It's a school she knows well. Shannon grew up a half-mile from the Great Lakes campus and sees this as an opportunity to pour herself into a program that can be a benefit to Lansing, providing opportunities for players locally and for those from elsewhere who are looking for a chance.

“I love to go after underdogs and the girls who are overlooked,” Shannon said. “I’m hoping that is what we can bring out of this as well — the girls who weren't given a chance or the girls who don't feel like they had a great high school season. I love girls with potential. And I love girls who want to work hard. And I feel like that's the epitome of what we've done this season.”

Shannon’s first move — and a pivotal one for this roster and this season — was convincing her longtime friend and high school teammate, Devan Buda, to come to Great Lakes and continue her college basketball career. They talked about it over dinner last May. As Buda remembers it, it began in a joking tone. Not long after, Shannon was putting Buda through a workout, which proved Buda still had it.

Buda had played two seasons at St. Mary’s College in South Bend, Indiana — and even played against Shannon several times when St. Mary’s played Adrian. Buda's mother had been their AAU coach when they were kids. They'd spent hundreds of hours on the court together. This would be a different dynamic, especially once Shannon became the head coach.

“At first, I thought it was going to be weird that she was yelling at me (as my coach),” Buda said. “I mean, she is only a year older than me. But Katy doesn't really yell. She encourages through example. There have been times where I need to step up and she's not afraid to get on me. And I respect that. When we're on the court, she's my coach. She's my best friend outside of basketball. But when it's time to play, like it's business time.”

When Buda showed up for the workout at Great Lakes with Shannon, everyone knew her name.

“They were so welcoming,” she said. “I just knew that I couldn't pass this opportunity up.”

Buda had always intended to finish her degree somewhere, but, before last spring, she thought her playing days were over.

They will be after the national tournament. She was nearly done in November and then, after two months off, again after two painful weeks in January. When Buda shows you her left shin, you can see the bruising from the stress fracture.

“She was in a tremendous amount of pain and still is, playing 40 minutes per game,” Shannon said.

Buda’s doctors wanted her to stop playing.

But on Feb. 6, the team’s senior point guard, Sakura Nakano — a 17-points per game scorer, three-year starter and beloved teammate — suffered an ACL injury that’ll require surgery when she returns to Japan after graduation this May. The Crusaders weren’t just without Nakano, they were getting low on available players.

“I think we only had six players when KK (Nakano) got hurt,” Bond said. “And, I mean, it's not broken. So I was like, I can play through the pain a little bit.”

Buda, like the rest of the starters, played the entire game in the regional final at Kuyper.

Great Lakes’ roster is thin, but committed.

It also includes: Makensie Mondy, a sophomore transfer from Grace Christian who’s now the team’s leading scorer and primary ball-handler; Randi Fitzgerald, also a soccer star at Great Lakes, from Warren Fitzgerald High School; Yanko, from Peoria, Illinois, who co-captains the team with Bond; and Mykenzie Kent, from Lansing Waverly, who leads the team in rebounding. Coming off the bench is Allie Ferrall, another soccer player, from Battle Creek Pennfiel, and two in-season additions from other sports to give the team depth — Holt’s Brianna Vinton, who’s primarily a soccer player at Great Lakes, and Reagan Lab, from Lake Odessa, who’s on the Crusaders’ volleyball team.

And also, KK, as she’s known, a nickname given to her by her teammates through a series of mispronunciations early in her time at Great Lakes.

She’s still at every game and practice, watching, cheering, sometimes jumping up and down on the bench — even though she knows she shouldn’t being jumping — trying her best to get over not being on the court with her teammates and to support them.

“When we won that regional championship, you could just tell how much that rocked her,” Shannon said.

“(Losing) her hurt,” Mondy said, “punched us in the gut a little bit. But it made us want even more just to play for her.”

'I lost hope'

The roster wasn’t always this quite small — though that has its advantages. “We don’t really have a choice but to like each other,” said Kent, the Waverly grad who first joined the team for the second half of last season.

The Crusaders lost a few players who decided to leave the team early on. Those who remain have enjoyed an experience they never saw coming.

“I lost hope,” Fitzgerald said. “I thought I was going to end my senior year just not ever doing anything in basketball and just soccer being the highlight. I thought that was just going to be my purpose here. But God made me practice patience. … I stayed here and was faithful to the team and I hoped like maybe before I leave something's going to happen. And it did. I’m so grateful. I'm so happy about it.”

The transformation, Fitzgerald and her teammates will tell you, began with a coaching staff that showed how much they cared by bringing organization to the program and purpose to how the team played.

“Ray did a good job coming in here, making plays for us, making sure that we were on top of our grades and letting us know that his assistants were right behind him, too.” Yanko said. “When Katy and McKenzie got here, they made it known that they genuinely care about us on and off the court. And they made sure that we were confident in not just ourselves, but in each other.”

When Shannon took over, she didn’t have time to think about whether she was ready. A year earlier, she’d been coaching middle schoolers. But coaching is in her bones. She knew that. It’s the reason her old high school coach recommended to Kimball that he bring her on staff.

“I didn't really have time to second guess myself,” Shannon said. “There are times where, as a coach, you just go with your instinct. Ray has really pushed that on me, as well. Even before our regional game, (telling me) ‘Just go with your instinct, you're a coach.’ ”

Shannon’s instincts are only part of what makes her a seemingly ideal fit for this program, this team and beyond.

“I knew what I was getting myself into,” she said. “I had played against Great Lakes in college. And so I knew what the culture was here. And the culture I think is the biggest thing that I knew needed to change. These girls have been through the absolute wringer with coaches. They haven't had consistency at all.

“It's taught me a lot about myself and my coaching style. The group of girls that I walked in with have just completely flourished into who they are right now.”

Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Great Lakes Christian College women's basketball triumphs over history and adversity