UWSP Athletics Recap and Preview

As the school year comes to an end, so does the UW-Stevens Point athletic season. We look back at the schools’ athletics across the board, reaching all the way to a national title with the men’s hockey team. A few of the coaches spoke on their 2018-2019 seasons and what they were looking forward to in the upcoming 2019-2020 seasons.

First up was the football head coach Greg Breitbach as he gave his thoughts on the Pointer season.“Last season was a unique experience, we came in so late at the 1st of July as a coaching staff so there was a lot to do 35 days before camp regarding hiring coaching staff, organizing the offensive, defensive and special teams’ schemes. Getting to know the players and what they can do and who they are. We played a very tough non-conference schedule and John Carroll who ended up 9-2 and, in the playoffs, Wabash ending up 9-2 as well, two good outfits in game one and game two. Learned a lot about ourselves, got better as a team. We won the 3rd game, the Spud Bowl against Dakota State and learned some things on both sides of the ball there as well. It prepared us for our league schedule and then going into the league and I felt like we got better each week as the season went on and down the stretch the last three games of the year being able to win 2 of our last 3.”

Breitbach said that as they get ready for the next season they are looking at a few of goals that they have. “Offensively get some points on the board and defensively make some big stops and control the running game a little bit really leads us to believe that we got a chance to do some things this next year. We’re really focused on some of the close games that we did not win, losing by 3 to Wabash, losing by 4 on homecoming against Stout were games that we felt like we could have won and also the Pink game against Platteville was an opportunity if we could’ve done a little more on offense and made a few more stops on defense we could have won that game.”

Breitbach went on to give his thoughts about what the upcoming season should look like and what he expects. “We expect to be over .500, we expect to win more than we lose, we expect to make a run at the conference championship. We were 3rd in the league and we would like to be 1st in the league and that’s where our focus has been in the offseason. We’ve been working on getting bigger and stronger in the weight room, that was our first focus and then just going through some continuity in the spring, revisiting our offensive and defensive schemes and our players are getting more comfortable with where they are. Then how to make the adjustments against the defenses and offenses that we play against. That’s going to put us a step forward going into fall camp and then it’ll just be a matter of how we play on game day.”

The Pointers open their season against John Carroll University on September 7th for their first of the non-conference games. They play their first conference game against UW-River Falls in Stevens Point on October 5th. It looks to be a promising season for the UWSP football team.

Women’s Basketball was the next focus as coach Shirley Egner gave her thoughts on the previous season and the upcoming season.
“Last season was very challenging for us, very youthful squad, we struggled with our win-loss record. But I felt like we made improvements throughout the season with our youth. Got a little bit more experience under our belt, was able to compete. Lost some close games, but you know everybody looks at that final win-loss record and you know we did not achieve double-digit wins for the year so that was disappointing. Overall, I felt like our kids gave great effort and were coachable, were just very useful.”

Egner spoke about the next season and what she expected from her athletes to be working on during the offseason. “You know this is the time of year as a Division III student-athlete where regardless of what sport they are in, they have to put some time in on their own, they have to be self-motivated and get in and get quicker, and stronger, and faster, and increase their agility and shoot the ball and all of those things that it takes to be a solid Division III student-athlete on the basketball court. So what I’m hoping for between now and October when we start up again for ’19-’20 that our student-athletes have been diligent, they have been disciplined, they’ve been in the gym, they worked on their skill set. The improvement of their individual skill set will help our team moving forward. Again, moving forward, we’re only going to have one senior next year, so this year we had two, next year we have one, so again we’re going to be youthful, but we can’t use that as a crutch. We’ve played our freshman; we’ve played our sophomores now those freshmen and sophomores are going to be sophomores and juniors and it’s time for them to step up and reach our expectations. Which do not change year in and year out in our program and that’s to win the WIAC league, win the WIAC conference tournament and get into the NCAA tournament. We haven’t been in the NCAA tournament since the 16’ season so this senior class has not participated in the NCAA tournament and that’s a goal of ours. We will work extremely hard and be very disciplined with what we’re doing, hoping that were able to get into the NCAA tournament come next February of 2020.”

The Pointers were led by freshman Amber Baehman last year averaging 13 points and 7.5 rebounds per game. She looks to help the Pointer team and leads them for a deep run next year.

Next up on the list was the head coach for the women’s volleyball team Lindsay Kooi as she gave her thoughts on her teams 2018-2020 season
“Any head coach can say you never want to settle and you’re constantly wanting to get better. We were battle tested last year, I think we ended up having the third toughest schedule in the Midwest region, but it helped us prepare for our conference. If we wouldn’t have played a tough schedule, I don’t think we would have made it to the semifinal match in our conference tournament. We give Eau Claire a run for their money in the semifinal game, they went all the way to the final 4 and we probably should have beat them. That’s one game I wish we would have back, so we’ve definitely had our ups and downs, but I think this team really battled adversity and handled it extremely well and we were playing our best volleyball at the end of the season.” Kooi stated.

Looking forward to next year a majority of the team will be returning for a good season. “We are pumped. We only lose one starter, everybody is returning, we had a couple of underclassmen get a ton of experience and that always helps them looking forward. We’ve got high expectations, I think this team, our season fell a little bit short last year and they are hungry to exceed those expectations and reach the NCAA tournament and win a conference championship and it’s going to be hard, but they’ve got the right mindset to do it. We’ve been working hard in our spring season training and we’re heading to Europe to play four matches in just about two 2 1/2 weeks. Again, it’s all those opportunities for us to grow as a team and hopefully reach our goals so we’re pretty excited.”

The women’s team finished with an overall record of 18-16 with a 4-3 conference record. Having a tight group with lots of returners this year makes for a promising upcoming season.

Across the board, the coaching staff for all teams sees a good year if they can put the pieces together and work hard in their offseasons. Stay tuned for updates next year on your UWSP Pointers. #Rolldawgs