The 2023-2024 winter season delivered a mixed bag of results all across the board for Hamline athletics. Basketball continued to excel, with Men’s Head Coach Jim Hayes and star players junior Bradley Cimperman and junior Austin Holt helping to push the Pipers to its most successful season yet. Women’s Hockey drastically improved from their 2022-2023 record, while the Men’s saw a disappointing dip from their solid last year. The university’s swim and dive teams ended up logging another round of successful placements, especially rising first-year diver Britney Krumrei.
To kick off the 2023-2024 season, the Basketball team ended 2023 with an even 5–5 record. After a loss to the Knights in their first game of 2024, the prospects for a fruitful new year looked slim. That was until they embarked on a historic seven game win streak, going undefeated throughout the majority of January until having that streak ultimately snapped by Concodia-Moorhead. The Pipers would end the 2023-2024 season with an overall record of 17–11, making it the most games that the team has won in a single season since 1977 and making it to the championship of the MIAC tournament.
“We have a group that trusts and believes in each other,” Hayes said. “They allow us to be demanding of them and are willing to pay attention to the details.” That trust would also nab the Pipers a staggering 2053 total points, with the team’s breakout players, Bradley Cimperman and Austin Holt, contributing 787 of those points.
Women’s Basketball, on the other hand, did not see the same level of success, ending the 2023-2024 season with a record of 12–13, a noticeable decline from their excellent 18–9 finish the previous year. Despite initially going 4–1 in their first five games and claiming an upset win over the second seeded Cobbers, the Pipers also hit a few rough patches like losing eight out of the nine games they played from early December to late January. This string of losseswould follow them into the MIAC tournament where they were eliminated by the Wildcats in the first round.
“Next year, it will be important to maintain a consistent work ethic and find a flow. Flow requires positivity and mutual respect between all members of the program; it allows for us to consistently improve and have fun together,” senior Lydia Lecher said.
Women’s Hockey proved to be a force on the ice in recent months. Following a 10–16 run last season, the Pipers returned with a resounding bang, culminating with a spectacular 18–8 record.
Starting off by trading wins and losses from late October to early November, the team would proceed to dominate the rest of the competition, winning 14 out of their next 15 games with multiple victories over schools such as St. Catherine, Saint Benedict, St. Olaf, and Concordia-Moorhead. Their season ultimately came to a close when they eventually faced off with Bethel in the MIAC playoffs, losing in the final ten seconds of the match.
In comparison to last year where they went 13–11 in games, Men’s Hockey unfortunately could not quite seem to pick up any steam throughout most of the 2023-2024 season. Although a 3–2 record over their first five games suggested a fair degree of promise, the competition proved to be incredibly fierce this time around, with the Pipers often experiencing three to four losses in a row before finally nabbing a win.
Although it looked like hockey had at last found their footing with two back-to-back wins over Wisconsin Eau Claire and Superior in November, they again would suffer consistency issues by going 1–8–1 for the rest of the season, ending with an overall game record of 7—16—2 after losing to Bethel in the season finale.
For the first leg of the 2023-2024 season, the Women’s Swim and Dive team managed to perform very well. From October with the Hamline Alumni Meet to January with the Piper Red Invite, they notably placed outside the top four only twice, both at the Macalester Roger Ahlman Invites.
That was, however, until the fourth day of MIAC tournament saw them suffer a pair of seventh and eighth place finishes. Leading the women is surging freshman sensation Britney Krumrei, who has made a gigantic splash this season with her combined eight first place finishes in the one and three meter dive.
For the Men’s program, they showed a great amount of consistency in the first four months of the season, with them acquiring nine top five finishes between the Hamline Alumni Meet and Piper Red Invite as well. However, just like the women, they also had a rough go of it at the MIAC tournament, exiting the competition with four sixth place performances in a row.
