Senior Sydney Mills is Hillsdale’s all-time leading rebounder. Courtesy | Hillsdale College Athletic Department

One of the most successful careers in the history of the Hillsdale women’s basketball program started with a Twitter direct message.

Fifth-year senior Sydney Mills was in the recruitment process for Division II basketball programs when her dad saw a Hillsdale women’s game and sent a message to then-head coach Matt Fritsche that he was bringing his daughter to visit the school.

“From that moment, they started watching my games a lot, coming to my high school games,” Mills said. “I got an offer to play here. It kind of just all fell into place.”

The four-time All-G-MAC honoree from DeWitt, Michigan, finishes her career as the program’s all-time leading rebounder with 1,181 career rebounds, breaking the previous record of 1,146 set by Sandy Skaisgir in 1986-91. She also ranks eighth in total points with 1,440 career points and is the third player in Charger history to reach both 1,000 points and 1,000 rebounds. 

“She’s one of a kind, especially for Hillsdale women’s basketball,” head coach Brianna Brennan said. “She’s a generational talent. I don’t know when we’ll see the next Sydney Mills.”

Mills helped lead the team to two G-MAC conference appearances and its best conference record since 2018-2019 in her final season. She will graduate in the top 10 all-time in Hillsdale women’s basketball in multiple categories including sixth in blocked shots with 83, 10th in field goals made with 501, eighth in 3-pointers made with 182, and third in double-doubles with 41.

“Sydney is one of the best rebounders in all of Division II,” former head coach Charlie Averkamp said. “She has a knack for being around the ball and will sacrifice her body at all costs to help the team get a rebound. Her breaking the Hillsdale career rebounding record really cements her legacy as one of the all-time great players in the rich history of women’s basketball at Hillsdale College.”

The daughter of two coaches, Mills started playing basketball with her family when she was four years old on a court her parents built in their backyard. 

“That’s kind of where it started – just shooting around the backyard, my brother and my mom and dad,” Mills said.

By third grade, she was playing year-round. By seventh grade, she knew she wanted to continue in college.

Mills said the first things she noticed about Hillsdale when she visited was the honor code and the culture of the team.

“People are super trusting here and super caring,” Mills said. “And that was just evident from the first day that I stepped on campus. And the players too, I got to talk to all of them. You could just tell that they all really loved each other, and I wanted to be part of something like that.”

Because she came from a talented high school team, Mills said she knew she would have to put in the work to earn a spot in the program at Hillsdale.

“I didn’t really expect to play coming in, which I think, looking back on my career, has kind of been an advantage to me a little bit because from the day I stepped on campus, I knew I’d have to work for my minutes,” Mills said. 

That work ethic not only earned Mills playing time freshman year, but launched her into a leadership role on a team that would undergo two coaching changes during her career. 

Averkamp became head coach after Fritsche in 2020, following Mills’ freshman year. He remained in the position until Brennan became head coach this year.

“I will remember Sydney as a fun loving, goofy, clumsy, hard-working person who cared more about the team than herself,” Averkamp said. “On the court she is one of the best rebounders I have ever seen and could score inside and out, making her a really tough player to match up with. She made my job easier as a coach and I am so proud of the player and person she has become”

Averkamp said Mills was bought into helping the program improve from the first day he came in as coach and would do anything for the team.

“My first year, I remember getting on Sydney so many times for doing stuff wrong because I truly saw the potential in her,” Averkamp said. “I am sure she was annoyed by the constant ‘What are you doing Sydney’ and ‘Come on, Sydney, get it together,’ but the end result showed the type of player she could become. Her improvement as a shooter, rebounder, leader, and winner is a true story of hard work, time and effort, and buying into a system and a team.”

It was because of Mills that the team improved from winning only three conference games her freshman year to making the conference tournament her fourth and fifth years in the program, according to Averkamp.

Brennan said Mills was a skilled rebounder from the beginning but continued to contribute more offensively each year.

“One of the coolest transformations that I’ve seen is the way that she focused on her inside game. She always gets to really good places in the paint,” Brennan said. “One of the things she worked on is just slowing herself down because she’s so much stronger than most girls and she’s so skilled with her touch around the hoop. And so it was really cool to just see her continue to expand the ways that she can score inside.”

Mills showed up to practice every day with a smile on her face, ready to work, according to Brennan.

“When you play basketball for five college years, that’s hard to do,” Brennan said. “Because she showed up every single day ready to go, she just kept getting exponentially better. It’s her mindset. It’s her drive. It’s also her passion. She’s crazy passionate about the sport, but also just about our program in general.”

Mills said Averkamp and Brennan both challenged her to be a more vocal leader on the court.

“She has always, always, always led by example,” Brennan said. “Each year, she would feel more comfortable at calling her teammates out or challenging them when we’re not holding the standard we want to hold. She became more vocal, so she was really like a coach on the floor for us.”

Freshman Maddy Greene said Mills was always able to help the team refocus during games.

“She’s like our rock on the court,” Greene said. “She always knows how to get us in a rhythm or get us out of the slump.”

Though Mills called out her teammates and challenged them on the court, she was there to support them off the court as well, according to teammate and junior Carly Callahan.

“She’ll push you in practice and everything, but at the end of the day, you can always come and talk to her after practice,” Callahan said.

Although Mills said reaching 1,000 points and rebounds was her most significant personal accomplishment at Hillsdale, she hardly mentioned it to the team, according to Callahan. 

“When she broke her record for 1,000 rebounds, she never made any comments,” Callahan said. “No matter how she individually performed, it didn’t matter, if the team played well.”

Personal accomplishments aside, Mills said her favorite memory with the team was finding out they made the G-MAC conference tournament after beating Malone University her true senior year.

“We came out, and we literally played the best game of our whole entire year,” Mills said. “Our offense was clicking, our defense was clicking, just like so good. I just remember ‘coach A’ going to the front of the locker room and pretty much telling us we got into the tournament. Everyone stands up and cheers. I think everyone was just so proud of each other.”

Mills made the decision to stay for a fifth year after her sophomore season, but she said she didn’t realize how hard it would be to stay on campus a year longer than the friends in her year.

“It has been probably the hardest thing that I’ve ever done,” Mills said. 

Mills said she has enjoyed getting the opportunity to foster relationships with the younger girls in the program – some of whom jokingly refer to her as ‘grandma.’

More than Mills’ leadership on the court, Greene said she will miss having Mills around on the team. Whenever the team travels, Greene said she and Mills would have fun trying to pull pranks on the other girls. 

“It’s more than just basketball,” Greene said. “She’s just a great friend too.”

Mills said she stuck with basketball for so long because it’s a selfless sport that values both team and individual accomplishments. 

“It’s the ultimate team sport,” Mills said. “I’ve been on good teams where we celebrate other people’s successes more than you celebrate your own. And if you’re on teams like that, you don’t want to give it up.”

Mills said she is grateful for the support of her parents, who have attended almost all of her collegiate games, as well as her coaches, teammates, and the athletic department at Hillsdale.

“If I was at any other school, I don’t know if I’d have coaches that are calling me up to my their office to just chat,” Mills said. “People in the athletic department, people in the training room, they just care about you. And so I’d say playing for a school that supports you in more ways than basketball is what makes this place so awesome.”

She plans to pursue a career in counseling and return to Dewitt to coach middle and high school basketball.

“It’s hard that basketball is done,” Mills said, “but I think what keeps me sane is that I have the opportunity to bring younger girls or younger boys, whoever I ended up coaching, to love it almost more than I do.”