Two players on the Hillsdale College women’s basketball team, senior guard Grace Touchette and junior forward Sydney Mills, were selected to All-Conference teams, while Peighton Nelson was named G-MAC Freshman of the Year.
Touchette became the first Charger since 2018-19 to be named to the first team All-G-MAC, and Mills was selected to the second team All-G-MAC for the second time in her career. Nelson became the first Charger to ever win Freshman of the Year.
“Basically the coaches in the league vote on the top 20 players that deserve awards for their performance that season,” Mills said. “The top 10 get put on the first team and the next are the second team.”
Touchette led the Chargers in scoring, averaging a team-high 16.6 points per game, the highest of her career. This marks the first year of Touchette’s career being named to an All-Conference team.
“People who made All-Conference are impact players,” Touchette said. “It’s just great to achieve a goal I didn’t really know was possible. It didn’t hit me when coach told me, but then later I realized just what it meant.”
Mills led the team in rebounds and averaged a double-double for her second straight season. She collected 12 double-doubles during the season, a career best that tied her for fourth most in the Midwest Region. She was also tied for the team-lead in three pointers made
“It’s just a testament to the work we all put in this season,” Mills said. “If the team hadn’t improved as much as they did, we wouldn’t have gotten these awards at all.”
Nelson started most of the season as a freshman guard, and had a season high of 16 points. She was followed closely by her freshman teammates Caitlin Splain and Carly Callahan who carried season highs of 21 and 15.
“If you look at just her improvement, she started out pretty slow offensively, but toward the end of the season she was shooting double digits consistently,” Touchette said. “She is going to be so successful in her next three years, and the other people in the league better watch out for her.”
Every coach in the league had a vote in picking Peighton, and Head Coach Charlie Averkamp said he could not be happier.
“Peighton was the first kid I recruited when I got the job at Hillsdale,” Averkamp said. “Both of us being from Wisconsin, we had a connection right away. She’s the ultimate team player, and we’re just so happy she’s on our team.”
Averkamp also believed that these three ranked as well as they did as a result of the entire team’s effort.
“You have to get team success to get individual awards,” Averkamp said. “Our team is very excited for all of them. If we didn’t finish where we did, we would probably only have one of them being recognized.”
