Randolph-Macon women complete historic season with ODAC title

SALEM, Va. – On one face, tears of joy. On another, unadulterated joy.

For Randolph-Macon head coach Lindsey Burke-Eberhart and fifth-year senior Catherine Kagey, the final seconds of the Yellow Jackets’ 65-58 win over Washington and Lee in the 2025 Old Dominion Athletic Conference championship game on Saturday night in Salem were a dream come true.

“I keep telling them, whatever is delayed is not denied,” said an ebullient Burke-Eberhart courtside during the postgame celebration. “I just felt like the way they played today and the way they’ve been playing, they just refused to be denied.”

The victory capped a conference season that reached rarefied air, with the Jackets becoming only the fifth team in ODAC history to complete a perfect campaign: 16-0 in the regular season, and three more in the tournament. The last team to finish unblemished? The 2005 Randolph-Macon team that advanced to the Division III National Championship game.

At the heart of the on-court effort was Kagey, named the tournament’s Most Valuable Player, who was always at the right place at the right time, battling head-to-head offensively with ODAC Player of The Year Mary Schleusner, who had a double-double in the first half for the Generals with 18 points and 11 rebounds. 

There were six lead changes in the fourth, the fifth of which came from Schleusner, scoring the final two of her game-high 31 points with 3:08 remaining for a 55-54 Generals lead. 

Sam Smith, the sharp sophomore from nearby Saint Gertrude, blocked a Generals shot inside of 2 minutes remaining, setting the stage for the championship’s biggest sequence, as McKenzie Matheny with 1:04 remaining for a 60-55 lead, taking nearly a minute off the clock.

For Kagey, who has recovered from two separate ACL tears, the second of which wiped out her 2023-24 season, the moment the horn sounded was everything she dreamed of, and more.

“It’s so surreal. It’s hard to put into words,” Kagey noted. “I just think it points back to the team 100%. Going into this, we had no doubt in our mind that this was going to be our game. We got good defensive stops and good boards.”

Kagey finished with 25 points and 10 rebounds, her fourth consecutive double-double, and 12 of the year. She made 11 of 14 free throws, while Smith, who originally balked at the idea of staying close to home and playing for the Yellow Jackets, made seven of eight at the charity stripe and finished with 13 points, three rebounds and two assists.

“Coach was on me throughout the recruiting process, trying to convince me to stay close, and I said I’m not going in-state,” Smith explained. “But I went on my overnight (visit) and met the people. The community, the team, the coaching staff, it’s all high level. They will push you on and off the court, and it really drew me.”

Matheny concluded with 12 points and eight rebounds, while Juliana Park scored seven, Morgan Miller four, and Emion Byers and Marisa Ziegler added two apiece.

Ziegler, who scored a career-high 17 points in January in a win over Shenandoah, pointed to the philosophy of her coach to help explain how Randolph-Macon has won a program-record 26 consecutive games.

“We’ve worked our butts off to get here, and I’m so proud of these girls and everyone around us,” Ziegler noted, sounding a bit like a coach herself. “Every practice, every game, we took one by one. We ran the mile that we were in. We focused on the next opponent, no matter who it was. We took everyone as seriously as we could.”

The seed planted by the phrase “run the mile that you are in” took strong root with a team whose seniors lost the championship game as freshmen in 2022, and exited in the quarterfinal round each of the past two seasons. And that is why Burke-Eberhart shed tears of joy, and, to an extent, relief, as the reality set in that perfection was in their grasp.

“Relief in the sense that I wanted it so bad for them,” the coach explained. 

The journey isn’t over. The NCAA will announce the Women’s Division III Basketball Championship field of 64 teams on Monday afternoon, and it’s expected that the Yellow Jackets will host a first/second round pod this weekend based on the new NCAA Power Index (NPI) which ranks teams, taking some guesswork out of the at-large bid selection process. Randolph-Macon was ranked ninth in the nation as of Sunday afternoon.

Which would mean their next mile, and possibly two, would give Kagey and the seniors a chance to make more memories, and more history, at home.