In March, the women’s basketball team advanced to the second round of the NCAA Div. III Championships. It may have lost to Simpson College (Iowa), but it was the farthest the team has been since 2003. Part of the success came from the team’s four seniors: Michelle Burns, Amanda Zenner, Rachel Mueggenborg and Kali Houselog.
The foursome also contributed to the team’s 14-2 WIAC record and a 23-7 record overall.
“This was a good year to end on. We had a great season,” Burns said. “We accomplished a lot of the goals we set for ourselves, and it was a good way to go out.”
Burns said the group is special, especially since the team lost no seniors the year before.
“It definitely is a special group. Zenner and I have been here all four years and then Kali and Muggs coming in the next few years,” she said. “We really have made a strong bond and I think it was important that we had a lot of leadership this year to get back to the national tournament.”
Coach Tonja Englund agreed.
“All four of them were tremendous,” she said. “They were great role models. All four, if you look at their careers, you can see how it grew over time in Eau Claire. Michelle and Rachel both overcame injuries. Kali has been a tremendous leader. Amanda is one of those in our lineup if you look back after the game, she’s contributed in every way.”
Z
Zenner, who is referred to as “Z” oftentimes by her teammates, played all four years at Eau Claire,along with Burns. Zenner, a biology major, said she didn’t decide to come to Eau Claire until late March of her senior year of high school.
“I wasn’t actually even planning on coming here,” she said. “But then everything just worked out. I just felt compelled to come here. It was a great school for what I wanted to go into, it has a great science department, so everything worked out.”
Zenner said she is planning on applying to physicians assistants schools, although she’s not sure where she wants to go yet.
Zenner was a regular starter who averaged 6.5 points a game and had a total of 119 rebounds for the season.
“Z is over-the-top intense sometimes and we’d have to tell her to calm down in practice,” Mueggenborg said. “But I enjoyed being captain with Z because she would know how to yell at the team and get them going in practice if we weren’t doing what we should be doing and I think we complemented each other well.”
Houselog said she and Zenner, who are both biology majors, would talk a lot about biology and make diagnoses.
“People get annoyed with us, but we find each other amusing,” Houselog said with a smile. “Basketball wise, she is a really strong leader, and that kind of went unsaid.”
Muggs
Mueggenborg joined the team her sophomore year of college.
“It was one that I was comfortable with right out of high school,” she said. “And I got to know a lot of the girls over the summer.”
Mueggenborg, an outside hitter, averaged eight points a game. She led the team with 51 3-pointers and set a new school record for most 3-pointers in a game with nine on Feb. 26 against UW-River Falls.
“Muggs, coming off the bench was able to provide that 3-point spark,” Burns said. “She blew out teams by herself a couple times, which is amazing.”
Mueggenborg is a kinesiology major and said she is planning on going to grad school.
“I’m going to start looking at grad schools, and then eventually be a health promotion coordinator.”
Houselog said she thinks Mueggenborg’s goal is to make everyone healthy.
“She has a really great work ethic,” she said. “She’s a great friend. She’s passionate about what she wants to do. Her life goal is to make people healthier, and teach people healthy habits.”
Kali
Houselog has spent the least amount of time on the team, only two years. She transferred from Minnesota State University-Moorhead after her sophomore. Even though Moorhead is a Div. II school, Houselog said it wasn’t that different to come to Eau Claire.
“It was interesting as far as relationships go,” she said. “It’s always hard when you go to a new place to find new friends and connect with the team. But everyone here was great and I made friends easily. The level of competition was pretty similar because Eau Claire is at a much higher level compared to other Div. III schools.”
Houselog is using her biology major to go into chiropractics. She is going to attend chiropractic school at Northwestern College in Bloomington, Minn. after graduation.
Houselog averaged three points per game this season and provided what Burns called a “spark off the bench.”
“She came in and made some huge plays in a lot of games this year that got us back in the game,” Burns said. “She just provided the spark that we needed.”
Mueggenborg and Zenner said Houselog is known for her humor.
“Kali is someone that will make you laugh every day,” Mueggenborg said.
“She’s a sleeper though, you won’t expect it,” Zenner added.
“She’s extremely focused though,” Mueggenborg said. “You’ll have a lot of inside jokes with Kali.”
Burns
Last, but certainly not least is Burns, who led the team in scoring this season with an average of 14.2 points a game. She has numerous accolades, including All-Central Region Second Team Honors as well as 2007-’08 WIAC Player of the Year.
Burns, an Eau Claire native, will graduate in December. She will be student teaching, and said she wants to teach fifth grade.
“My favorite teacher in elementary school was a fifth grade teacher,” she said. “And he just made such an impact on me that I always wanted to teach that grade.”
Burns said she hopes to stay in the Eau Claire area and stay involved with the team.
Her teammates said Burns was a player they could rely on both on and off the court.
“She was definitely someone we could count on the court,” Zenner said. “She’s a good competitor.”
Mueggenborg agreed.
“We’d laugh because she’d always be sleeping by the time the bus got out of the parking lot, but she’d wake up and she’d bring it,” Mueggenborg said.
All four seniors said they will miss playing basketball and being part of a team.
“I’m going to miss being on a team,” Zenner said. “It’s the last time you’re all in the trenches together. You’ll find that in the workforce, but not as much. Overcoming hardships and celebrating the good times together will be something I’ll miss.”
Houselog said she’s going to miss seeing friends everyday.
“I’m going to miss the people on the team. The other night we got together for a character study, and it was just about a third of us and we talked for an hour because we were just so excited to see each other and it’s only been a week and a half,” she said. “Especially for me too, only being here two years, I feel like I made really strong connections with the people on the team, and I only get two years with them.”
While losing four seniors might be tough for any team, Englund said she feels the junior class is ready to take over.
“I think that’s a credit to our seniors,” she said. “In order to become a great leader, you have to watch it, and see how it evolved. All four of them had different things they brought to the table and I look at our junior class and I see the same thing.”