Last spring, Chris Kielsmeier met with members of Cleveland State’s Board of Trustees to discuss the state of his operation.
The trustees may or may not be avid women’s basketball fans, but at the very least, they had to be casually aware of the headlines around one of their school’s signature athletic teams. Specifically, nine 2024-25 Vikings entered the transfer portal as soon as the season concluded, highlighted by Mickayla Perdue, who was named the Horizon League’s Player of the Year roughly one month earlier, and Destiny Leo, a locally-produced talent who spent most of her four years in green and white as the face of the program.
If they didn’t know, Kielsmeier wasn’t shy about telling them.
“I went into my little sob about how things have been rough the last couple months with the changing climate of college athletics, and the tampering, and all the stuff that’s wrong with college athletics that’s going on out there,” he remembered.
Even now, with the benefit of knowing how things worked out, the coach still speaks of last spring as sort of a nadir, a pit of despair that caused the generally-confident 50-year-old some rare moments of hesitation. That much is perfectly natural; as with many coaches, Kielsmeier believes in the life-altering power of sports beyond the white lines, and sees himself as leadings towards something much larger than next week’s game. When one player opts out of his program, let alone nine, it’s easy to take that as a personal failure on some level.
“You have some nights where you doubt yourself, and doubt what you’re doing,” he admitted recently. “[But] you’ve just got an incredible support system around you that reminds you to be you and just dig in.”
“You’ve always figured it out,” he continued, relaying the message from that support system. “You’re going to figure it out again. So just go keep doing what you’ve done and you’ll find a way.”
Appropriately reinforced, his closing statement to the Board of Trustees was simple: the program’s expectations haven’t changed, and the goal remains title contention in Indianapolis at the end of the season.
Hundreds of miles away from that board meeting, talented players like Izabella Zingaro and Jada Leonard were questioning some things as well.
Leonard had been a bright spot with putrid Saint Peter’s teams for two years, followed by a season at Bryant lost due to injury. Zingaro had seen some success, albeit mostly from the bench, with perennial power Iowa State. She then took a year off before returning with more playing time, but less winning, at Montana last year.
Neither had much luck finding the sort of transformative college basketball experience that, ultimately, is the goal of just about everyone in the sport.
There were others, of course, including Laurel Rockwood at UC Santa Barbara, Northern Colorado’s Ella Van Weelden, former La Salle forward Shey Magassa, Abilene Christian rookie Paula Pique, and ambitious Division III shooter Colby Guinta. In all, nine players transferred to Cleveland State during the spring and summer (injured Queen Ruffin and Madison Royal-Davis, late of Indiana State and Oakland, were the other two) matching the outbound group that leveled the Vikings weeks earlier.
What followed from that once-unlikely group of teammates were nine months and 33 games of struggle, growth, and ultimately, success. Indeed, by the end of it all, CSU’s season – against some pretty steep odds – matched Kielsmeier’s stated expectations and looked a lot like most other recent CSU seasons, with 24 wins and a seventh straight trip to the final rounds of the Horizon League tournament in Indianapolis.
It also gave both Zingaro and Leonard a sense of belonging.
“I’m just so proud of everybody and happy to be on this team,” Zingaro offered. “It’s just been a great experience for sure.”
“I’m proud of us,” Leonard added. “We’re a strong knit group. I’m just grateful to be here we’ve got a lot of great people around us.”
Certainly, something died on Monday, when the Vikings fell to Youngstown State by a 60-55 count in the HL semifinals. After all, the conference title and March Madness are on every team’s list of goals at the beginning of each season, and those fell off the table right about when Penguins guard Danielle Cameron’s go-ahead three splashed home with 22 seconds remaining. But, by definition, that also means that something lived.
Among other things, it has re-invigorated Kielsmeier, ahead of what will be another substantial rebuild over the next few months – though thanks more to expiring eligibility limits than to the portal this time.
“I loved it, I had a tremendous amount of fun,” he said of his experience this season. “That’s what college athletics is about. I said earlier, there’s a lot of challenges that are going on in college athletics right now, but well, there’s a bunch that hasn’t changed, and the good is as good as it’s ever been. And that’s the kids, that’s the people.”
The consensus is that the coach will get a bit longer with his once-motley roster though, thanks to the WNIT. Cleveland State will learn whether it will participate in its sixth straight postseason on Sunday night, with pairings and brackets announced the next day.
“This is a power league, and we finished third,” Kielsmeier replied, when asked to evaluate the Vikings’ chances of playing more games this year. “We got to the tournament semifinals. We’ve got power wins over College of Charleston and Radford teams…Charleston will probably win their tournament. Radford almost won their tournament.”
“I mean, we deserve to play and our resume speaks for itself. So I don’t need to justify that a whole lot, I don’t think.”
In recent years, CSU has found plenty of program-defining moments outside of the NCAA Tournament. The 2021 Women’s Basketball Invitational brought the school’s first-ever postseason title, and served as something of a springboard for successes to follow, including a trip to March Madness two years later. Last season’s WNIT also ended with a banner, thanks to a Fab 4 run that involved beating Coppin State, Duquesne, and conference rival Purdue Fort Wayne, before falling to eventual champion Buffalo in the semifinals.
Another memorable closing act from the ashes of disappointment is decidedly on the table for the 2025-26 Vikings, though it seems as if something even more important has already been won.
“I’ve been fortunate enough to coach phenomenal people,” Kielsmeier said. “That locker room…this was such a rewarding year for me up to this point. And it’s just because of who these guys are as people. Phenomenal.”
He’d do well to lead with that at his next board meeting.
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I can’t stress enough how remarkable the growth Chris has shown too over these years. HE’s a great coach who cares about his players. If I had a daughter ready for the college basketball world, I’d have no problem having him coach her.