When Claire Meadows returned to her alma mater as head coach of the women's basketball team 14 years after her U Sports playing career ended, it may have been different than she initially expected.
Just two years after Meadows finished her fifth and final season at Queen's in 2007, the school debuted the Queen's Athletics & Recreation Centre (ARC) — a state of the art facility in Kingston, Ont., that affords a coach any of the resources and amenities one could hope for to help produce a winning program.
But in her first days on the job, Meadows had to go back to basics in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, where teams were forced to practice outside.
"My first practices with Queen's were in a parking lot," said Meadows, who finished her career as the No. 2 scorer in the school's history. "We had spray-painted court lines, with a three-point line with hoops that we bought from Canadian Tire. Those were our first practices together.
"[Training during COVID] was challenging for sure ... but it forces you to be creative."
Despite the disjointed start to the 2021-22 season, the team had no issues gelling en route to a 9-5 regular season record before their quarterfinal loss to the eventual U Sports champion Ryerson Rams in the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) playoffs.
The leadership group already in place proved invaluable during the run.
Upperclassmen like guards Emma Weltz, Laura Donovan, Emma Ritcey and Bridget Mulholland combined with forwards Julia Chadwick, Sophie de Goede and Michelle Istead to form a strong nucleus that had already experienced a measure of success prior to the pandemic shutting down the 2020-21 campaign.
In the case of star player Chadwick, the Ottawa native already had an inkling of what Meadows brought to the table after being coached by her at the FIBA U18 Americas Championships in 2018 — where she earned a silver medal for Team Canada.
"When I heard that [Meadows] was going to be our new head coach, I was really, really excited," Chadwick said. "Because our [2018 FIBA Americas] season was so short, I was really excited to get to know her a bit better. It's been amazing to play for Claire.
"Claire is a super smart coach, but also a really great human. And I think she's helping us to be better humans. She finds a good balance of allowing us to reach our full potential in basketball, but also our full potential as human beings."
Despite being knocked out in the OUA playoffs, Queen's still had a chance to earn its first medal in program history as hosts of the 2022 U Sports national championship, a feat accomplished as the seventh seed.
The Gaels took down No. 2-seed Saskatchewan — a team Meadows won gold with in 2020 as an assistant coach — in the quarterfinals before topping No. 4 Brock in the bronze-medal game after narrowly falling to No. 3 Winnipeg in the semifinals.
"Hosting nationals last year was honestly just a dream," said Timmins, Ont., native Weltz, whose 16 points alongside Chadwick's 19 led Queen's upset over the Huskies. "The environment throughout the whole tournament was just so electric playing in our home gym, and we felt so supported throughout the entire tournament, which I think really led to our success.
"Going in, we were clearly the underdogs. ... We really had nothing to lose. We went out there and truly just gave everything we had and proved a lot of people wrong and proved that we did deserve to be there."
The Gaels' run as an underdog has most certainly come to an end with their overwhelming success this season, leading the country with a 19-1 record.
The No. 3-ranked team in U Sports features fifth-year players Chadwick, Weltz, Donovan and Mulholland in important roles, paired with increased opportunities for third-year guard Isabella Gaudet and fourth-year guard Isabella Belvedere — the latter of which broke out with a 20-point game against Brock to help clinch the bronze medal for Queen's.
"I think something we talk about a lot is valuing the competition that we have in practice," Meadows said. "Some of our younger players in the program right now are spending everyday playing against the Weltz's, Chadwick's and Donovan's, so there's so much value in that competition."
The strong sense of leadership that Meadows' teams have featured continues to bear fruit off the court, as the Brantford, Ont., native's coaching staff now features Ritcey a year after she was named to the 2022 CIS championship tournament all-star team to cap off her career.
"[Ritcey] has been monumental to this program," said Weltz, whose career with the Gaels began in 2018 with a trip to Costa Rica to play the national team alongside Ritcey.
A 14-game winning streak to open the season was unceremoniously snapped by the Carleton Ravens on Jan. 27 in a 64-32 defeat, abruptly ending a run that saw the Gaels score no fewer than 68 points in any game prior.
As much of a sting as that loss was to another top-ranked team, Queen's players had no time to hang their heads as they faced the then 15-1 Ottawa Gee-Gees twice, as well as the 12-4 Guelph Gryphons to complete a four-game gauntlet.
"We knew going into it that each one of those [four] games were going to bring their own challenges," said Chadwick, who rebounded from a season-low two points against the Ravens to average 17.2 on the team's current five-game winning streak.
Queen's wraps up its regular season on the road this weekend against Nipissing and Laurentian before the OUA playoffs begin Feb. 22nd, followed by the U Sports Final 8 from Mar. 9-12 in Cape Breton, N.S.
Coverage for the national championships can be seen on CBCSports.ca, the CBC Sports app and CBC Gem for iOS and Android devices.
