Video Tribute: The CMS Women's Basketball Class of 2021
As part of NCAA Division III week (Apr. 5-11), we will be honoring the senior classes for all 21 of our varsity sports. A number of our student-athletes elected to take a semester or a school year off and could return to action next season, but we have chosen to honor the senior classes as they would have been, without the COVID-19 interruption. The members of the Class of 2021 lost so much of what they had built towards in their first 2-3 years of competition when the pandemic hit, but still clearly left their mark on CMS Athletics.
CLAREMONT, Calif. - Perhaps no CMS senior class was more frustrated by the pandemic cancelations than the Women's Basketball Class of 2021. The senior class headed into this year motivated heavily by unfinished business, after falling in the SCIAC Championship game in overtime last season and hoping to get the program back to the NCAA Tournament in their final campaigns.
In the individual goals department, two members of the class (Maya Love, Kate Parrish) also were on pace to join the exclusive 1000-point club with a fourth season, as well as moving up the top-10 list in career rebounds. Kelly Keene likely would have challenged for a spot on the single-season three-point list, and Maezelle Millan (co-captains this year with fellow senior Katelynn Nguyen) could have finished as high as second on the career assists list.
Despite missing out on their senior year and wondering what might have been, the CMS Women's Basketball Class of 2021 leave behind an impressive legacy of a 66-15 record over their three years, including 41-7 in SCIAC contests (an .854 conference winning percentage) and two regular season league titles. They also helped smooth the transition to a new coaching staff, after Head Coach Chanel Murchison came on board in 2019-20, which will carry on after they depart.
The five members of the CMS Women's Basketball Class of 2021 (four seniors and one graduate student) are as follows:
Kelly Keene (G, Seattle, Wash. - CMC, Biology)
Keene stepped into a major role her junior season, playing in all 27 games for the Athenas during the 2019-20 campaign, including 24 starts. She had a big day with 19 points on 7-9 shooting in a 46-45 regular season win at Whittier, and added 11 points in a key non-conference home win over Emory. She totaled 151 points on the year, knocking down 34 three-pointers, and also added 46 assists and 22 steals. A biology major at Claremont McKenna, she has earned SCIAC All-Academic team honors every year. Keene also spent the Summer of 2019 as a student researcher at Translational Research Institute in Brisbane, Australia and interned in the summer of 2020 with Matanuska Glacier Adventures in Alaska. She has also served the Claremont McKenna campus community as a success consultant, helping younger students develop well-being, academic, and life skills and strategies to achieve their goals at CMC.
Maya Love (G, Denver, Colo. - CMC, Government/International Studies; CGU, Applied Data Science/International Studies)
Love was part of the Class of 2020 (so isn't included in the class picture above), but missed her senior season due to injury, and was returning to the Athenas this year while pursuing her master's degree at Claremont Graduate University in applied data science and international studies. She made first-team All-SCIAC as both a sophomore and junior, averaging a double-double in 2017-18 with 12.9 points and 11.2 rebounds per game. Despite only playing three years, she ranks eighth in CMS history in career rebounds (631) and had 794 points, well on her way to joining the 1000-point club if she played her fourth season. Love earned Claremont McKenna's William H. Alamshah Award for student leadership last year after serving as the president of the Associated Students of CMC, and went on to participate in the Impact Fellowship Program in 2020-21. She also interned prior to her senior year as a legislative intern for U.S. Senator Michael Bennet.
Maezelle Millan (G, Fontana, Calif. - CMC, Economics and Philosophy)
Millan has been a regular starter at point guard throughout her three-year career. She had a career best 181 points last year (7.5 per contest) and a career-best 89 assists (3.7 per game), including 18 big points in a 71-66 win at Whittier in the SCIAC Semifinals to help the Athenas reach the SCIAC Championship game for the seventh straight year. She also had a career-high 19 points at Pomona-Pitzer, and then had a career-high 10 assists (and only one turnover) in the rematch with the Sagehens at home. A SCIAC All-Academic Team selection as an economics and philosophy major at Claremont McKenna, Millan has been a research assistant at the Kravis Leadership Institute, conducting research on the effect of socioeconomic class on adolescent self-efficacy and career success and has worked for two years as a consultant for SOURCE Nonprofit Consulting.
Katelynn Nguyen (G, San Marcos, Calif. - Scripps, Neuroscience)
Nguyen has been a regular contributor at point guard throughout her three-year career, appearing in 71 games, including 11 starts. She was named the SCIAC Offensive Player of the Week as a junior following a near-perfect performance in a two-point win at Cal Lutheran, scoring 22 points on 8-9 shooting (5-6 from three), making her first eight shots to keep the Athenas in the game until they won on a basket in the closing seconds. She also had a career-high seven assists against Whittier, when she stepped into the starting line-up. A neuroscience major (cellular and molecular) at Scripps, she plans to attend medical school and become an orthopedic spine surgeon. Nguyen has been active with the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee on campus, and has interned with Kaiser Permanente in the orthopedic department.
Kate Parrish (F, Seattle, Wash. - CMC, Psychology/Media Studies)
Parrish earned Second-Team All-SCIAC honors as a junior after moving into the starting line-up following two productive seasons as a top scorer on the second unit. She averaged 10.3 points and 7.8 rebounds per game as a junior, including a 27-point, 22-rebound effort in a win over Nebraska Wesleyan. She averaged 20.0 points in the two meetings with Pomona-Pitzer, and had 19 big points in a two-point win at Cal Lutheran. In three seasons, she totaled 735 points on 50 percent shooting, to go along with 500 rebounds. A SCIAC All-Academic Team member as a psychology/media studies dual major, Parrish has worked at Student Impact as a video production intern as a vice president of creative since June of 2020. She also had a summer internship with the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary.