5 Mercer seniors who changed women’s basketball culture ready to go out on high note

In Mercer’s regular season finale, the five seniors each heard their names called out for the starting lineup: Ally Welch, Amanda Thompson, KeKe Calloway, Rachel Selph and Linnea Rosendal.

It was the first time in four years that all of them started a game together. It was a moment filled with emotion for head coach Susie Gardner.

“I cried all day Friday. I would just cry. I was at Chick-Fil-A eating lunch and I just had tears going down my face at Chick-Fil-A just thinking about Saturday,” she said. “I think it hit me when they said starting at whatever, ‘senior’.”

101 wins. Four straight regular season titles. One NCAA tournament appearance. Countless records broken. These are just some of the accomplishments of perhaps one of the greatest senior classes that Mercer women’s basketball has ever had step foot on the court for the team. For Gardner, this group has been very special.

“They came in here as freshmen and absolutely changed the culture of our program,” Gardner said. “They don’t give me any trouble off the floor. They are good people.”

Despite already having talent like Kahlia Lawrence and Sydni Means at Mercer when this group arrived, no one expected the team to be able to put together a run quite like this, forward Amanda Thompson said.

“The program was obviously getting a lot better with Coach Gardner being here but this wasn’t what we expected,” she said. “I didn’t come in thinking ‘oh yeah, we are going to win four straight.’ That’s the dream, that would be awesome, but that wasn’t what we were expecting.”

This group meshed quickly with the class before them. The chemistry on and off the court helped feed their run to a regular season title in their first season.

“That was the crazy part. We were young, we were the youngest team in the conference,” Thompson said. “I think that was the magic. We were all basically the same age so we hung out all the time and we loved each other.”

Thompson has been an important piece for the Bears since she first stepped on campus, always willing to do the dirty work in order to get the win.

Yet, during her senior season she has taken on more of a scoring role than years past. She dropped a career-high 24 against Samford.

She said that is part of what makes this team so different from last year. The team relied heavily on Lawrence to provide the scoring punch but this year it has come from a variety of players.

“I think as a starting five we are the most well rounded we have been as far scoring,” she said. “Any of the starting five can have a 20-point night.”

The chance to finally start all five brought out a lot of emotions for Gardner in particular because it was the first time Welch had ever earned at start for the Bears.

“Ally is a huge, huge part of our program. She doesn’t play a bunch of minutes but she is a captain,” Gardner said. “When they announced Ally starting I had tears going again because this is so special for her.”

While the class will leave as the winningest group to ever come through Mercer, they’ve dealt with their fair share of heartbreaking losses, including back-to-back SoCon title games to Chattanooga. Thompson said those losses helped them learn to win the important games, and made it that much sweeter when they finally captured the title.

“Chat’ was really good those first two years. We were good but we were young,” Thompson said. “We had never been in that situation. I think having that experience, being in the championship game and knowing what it felt like, knowing how in-shape you had to be to finish it, just made a huge difference.”

For Rosendal, her career couldn’t have started out any better — she claimed the SoCon Freshman of the Year award — but injuries during her sophomore season led to problems.

It carried over into her junior year where she didn’t receive as much playing time as expected due to the continued struggles with shooting the ball. She didn’t start a single game.

This season she bounced back in a big way as she started all 30 games. Fans saw her regain that scoring ability right before their eyes and it culminated in a 23 point outing against UNCG.

Gardner said that her ability to stick with it and not give up is what makes her such a special player.

“Her shooting elbow was hurt so she didn’t get to play much as a sophomore or as a junior,” Gardner said. “She would spend extra hours just continually working by herself to stay in shape. So the time that Linnea put in, as frustrating as that was for her last year, she is reaping the benefits from that time last year.”

The senior class has already made an imprint on this program on the court and aren’t done just yet. Yet their contributions as players aren’t all that Gardner said she will miss.

“I love them. Those tears Saturday for senior night, they didn’t start just on senior night. They have been going off and on throughout the year,” she said. “I love them as people. I am going to miss them as human beings and people as much as players.”