UMD’s Mandy Pearson Reflects on Historic Women’s Basketball Season

Friday's win was Mandy Pearson's 100th at UMD as she became the fastest coach to hit that milestone in program history.

DULUTH, Minn. – Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened. Those are the words still ringing true for the UMD women’s basketball team as their season came to an end last weekend in the NCAA tournament.

And even after a loss, the Bulldogs had some good news to think about as head coach Mandy Pearson revealed Wednesday that seniors Ann Simonet, Payton Kahl and Sarah Grow will all return next season, thanks to the NCAA’s blanket waiver.

“I’m so excited about it because obviously our seniors are very talented. But just from a leadership perspective, they’re just a phenomenal group. And so it was a really interesting postgame conversation with our squad because normally, you’re saying good bye to some people. It’s the first time I wasn’t saying good bye to seniors and sad about that,” said Pearson.

In spite of several cancellations and pauses, UMD had one of their most successful years ever as the NSIC regular season and tournament champions. Pearson credits the positive attitudes of her players, as well as strong support from parents, too.

“Even though there were decisions that we had to make as an institution about the way that we’d handle it, I think they just encouraged their daughters and really helped that process because as you can imagine, if there’s one angry parent out there that’s telling their daughter that what’s going on is stupid and ridiculous, that can really impact a program. And I felt like that was, along with our players’ attitudes, that was huge for us,” Pearson said.

And one more note from this past season: Friday’s win was Mandy Pearson’s 100th at UMD as she became the fastest coach to hit that milestone in program history.