An All-America Season
Hope student-athletes delivered NCAA Division III All-America performances in 15 events and MIAA regular-season or tournament titles in four sports during the 2022-23 winter season.
Three student-athletes were named to Academic All-America® teams, as selected by the College Sports Communicators organization: senior environmental science major Claire Baguley (women’s basketball), senior biology major Evan Thomas (men’s basketball) and junior business/economics majors Ben Catton (men’s swim/dive).
Three more were voted as MIAA Most Valuable Athletes by the league’s coaches: senior Ana Tucker in indoor track, sophomore Abby Koops in diving and sophomore Sara Kraus in swimming. Both Koops and Kraus earned their honors for the second consecutive season. Senior Meg Morehouse was chosen as the MIAA Women’s Basketball Defensive Player of the Year. Hope totaled 37 All-MIAA First or Second Team recipients.
In swimming and diving, the Flying Dutch qualified 10 for the NCAA Championships in Greensboro, North Carolina, and placed 10th for their 17th Top-10 women’s finish and their highest finish at nationals since 2007. Hope brought home 13 First- or Second-Team All-America honors, including a national-runner-up swim in the 200-yard individual medley for sophomore Greta Gidley. Kraus and freshman Katie Hermann both earned First Team All-America honors in both the 100 and 200 backstroke, a Hope first. Junior Ben Catton represented the Flying Dutchmen at nationals in both the 100 butterfly and 100 freestyle. At the MIAA Championships, the Flying Dutch three-peated as MIAA Champions with a 276.5-point margin of victory during the four-day meet at Calvin University. The Flying Dutchmen took second.
In indoor track and field, the Flying Dutch finished 16th at the NCAA Championships in Birmingham, Alabama, behind Tucker’s national-runner-up effort in the 1-mile run and fourth-place run in the 3,000 meters. (Please see the next two pages for a story about how Tucker has found synergy between athletic competition and her exercise science major.) Hope also took ninth in the women’s distance medley relay. Junior Ben Meder represented the Flying Dutchmen at nationals in the men’s 800 meters. At the MIAA Championships, the Flying Dutch went back-to-back by dominating with seven event titles and a 106-point margin victory. The Flying Dutchmen won three events and placed fourth in the team standings.
In basketball, both the women’s and men’s teams advanced as far as the second round of the NCAA Division III Tournament and captured MIAA Tournament titles for the second consecutive season. The top-seeded Flying Dutch defeated Albion College and Trine University in a span of two days at DeVos Fieldhouse in February to clinch the MIAA’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. The third-seeded Flying Dutchmen beat No. 2 Trine University and No. 1 seeded Calvin University on back-to-back days at Calvin to earn the league’s berth in the NCAA Tournament.
The Hope College club hockey team finished as national-runner-up at the ACHA Division III National Championships in Marlborough, Massachusetts, near Boston. The Flying Dutchmen made a bid to three-peat as national champions before falling to the University of Michigan’s ACHA team, 5-3, in the title game.