Bowdoin is top-ranked women’s basketball team in country

BRUNSWICK (AP) – Stefanie Pemper preaches the virtues of the “thinking athlete.”

It helps that her players include a former valedictorian, a scholar who reads Greek and Latin, and another whose favorite motivational saying comes from a Nobel Prize winner – not Nike.

Smarts – and a tenacious defense – lifted the Bowdoin College women’s basketball team to No. 1 in the NCAA’s Division III. The Polar Bears ended the season 26-0 and with the top seed in their region.

It’s a given that many Bowdoin students are “wicked smart,” as they say on campus in true Maine fashion.

The median SAT scores for incoming freshmen are in the top 6 percent to 9 percent nationally.

The women’s basketball team last year made the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association academic Top 25 honor roll with a median grade point average of 3.342.

“We all work hard and focus the intensity we have on the court off the court as well,” said senior All-American Lora Trenkle.

Pemper, in her sixth season, says the players’ academic success helps advance the team’s on-court achievement.

“A thinking athlete has good judgment,” Pemper says. “They’re reading a situation, they’re reacting, and they’re not just playing with their bodies, so to speak.”

Bowdoin, in its 207 years, has a history of academic excellence. Graduates include a former president (Franklin Pierce), noted writers (Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow), and prominent politicians (former U.S. Sens. George Mitchell and William Cohen).

But besides distance runner and Olympic gold medalist Joan Benoit Samuelson, a 1979 graduate, the school is hardly recognized for its athletes. It has never won a national championship in any sport.

This year’s women’s basketball team could be the one to break the drought.

The Polar Bears are 76-5 over the past three seasons. Trenkle leads the team in scoring (13.3 points) and assists (3.9), but is hardly alone on the court.

The team usually pulls down seven more rebounds a game than its opponents. On defense, the team is tops nationally, giving up just 44.7 points per game.

They win by an average margin of 23.5 points a game. They beat Trinity College by 61 points, and Maine Maritime Academy by 56 points.

And they draw more fans than the men’s team, which ended the regular season 16-8.

“Word is out in the community as to how good this team is,” said Tom Farrell, the town’s parks and recreation director.

The players, like all Bowdoin students, also have full course loads and about four hours of homework each night. When the bus leaves campus for away games, the laptops and books come out, and players gather in small study groups.

Justine Pouravelis is as proud of never missing a class as she is being the team leader in rebounds, blocked shots and steals. Erika Nickerson is a classics major whose name can be found engraved into the school’s Latin and Greek prizes.

Courtney Trotta’s favorite motivational saying comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “What lies before us and what lies behind us are nothing compared to what lies within us.”

Lindsay Bramwell’s is from 1921 Nobel Prize winner Anatole France: “To accomplish great things, we must not only act but also dream; not only plan but also believe.”

This may be the year that the team hangs a national championship banner on the walls of Morrell Gymnasium.

They’ve come close before. They’ve won the New England Small College Athletic Conference championship three years straight. They advanced to the Sweet 16 of the national tournament three years ago, and to the Elite 8 in each of the past two years.

Even if they win, players and school officials promise to keep it all in perspective.

“Being No. 1 is incidental to who these young women are,” athletic director Jeff Ward said. “It’s great and it’s fun, but it doesn’t define who they are.”