Date: Sunday, November 16, 2008
Contact: Robert Dignazio / Sports Information Intern
(804) 752-7387, robertdignazio@rmc.edu
LaHaye Earns 432nd Career Victory, Becomes R-MC’s All-Time Winningest Head Coach
Ashland, Va. – When the Yellow Jackets entered the opening weekend of the regular season at the R-MC Tip-Off Classic on Saturday, head coach Carroll LaHaye had won four-hundred and thirty games over her twenty-six season career, and needed just two more victories to become R-MC’s all-time winningest head coach. It did not take long for her 2008-09 Yellow Jackets to pick up those victories, as the team won consecutive games against Elizabethtown and Alvernia on Saturday and Sunday to start the season 2-0.
After defeating Elizabethtown 71-48 on Saturday, R-MC scored fifty-four first-half points on Sunday en route to a 99-86 win against Alvernia. Senior guard Amanda Hiltunen netted thirty points, converting both of her three-point attempts and all fourteen shots from the foul line. Freshman forward Molly Brown scored thirteen points, while Renee Stein tallied twelve, including ten in the first half. Sophomore Jennifer O’Briant’s nine rebounds and eight assists led R-MC. In addition, Molly Ariail chipped in with nine points, while senior Lindsay Riesbeck added eight.
As the final seconds of the game ticked down, R-MC fans rose to their feet to salute the longtime head coach. Former players and students composed a cheering section in Crenshaw Gymnasium, where LaHaye began her career with the Yellow Jackets in the fall of 1981. Four-hundred and thirty-two victories since her first game at R-MC, she passed longtime men’s basketball head coach and R-MC Athletics Hall of Fame member Hal Nunnally, who coached from 1975 to 1999, on the school’s all-time wins list.
LaHaye has built quite a resume in Ashland. Under her direction, R-MC has earned seven Old Dominion Athletic Conference championships, seven berths in the NCAA Tournament, four appearances in the Sweet Sixteen, and two in the Elite Eight. In 2005, she piloted the Yellow Jackets to the Final Four and National Championship Game in Norfolk, Va. LaHaye has averaged more than twenty-five victories over the past five seasons.
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