by Alex Trepper

With the fall sports of football, men’s/women’s soccer and volleyball wrapping up their seasons, Greensboro College will transition into winter sports. The three sports that highlight the wintertime at Greensboro College are wrestling, men’s basketball and women’s basketball. This article will tell you everything you need to know about these programs as they begin their 2023-2024 seasons.  

The first winter sport to kick off their season was the Greensboro College wrestling teams. The women’s wrestling team had a complete roster turnover in the offseason and welcomed four new members to the squad. Germani Brown, Jasmine Edwards, Hailie Misplay and Destiny Vaughans will be the main competitors for the Pride this year in their respective weight classes. A super interesting part of their season will come on November 18 and 19 when the Ukrainian National Women’s Wrestling team comes to campus to compete against the Pride.  

The men’s wrestling team returns the bulk of their best wrestlers from a season ago. While the program does welcome some newcomers, the team is highlighted by senior All-American Josh Wilson. Wilson enters this season as the Old Dominion Athletic Conference (ODAC) preseason #1 wrestler in his weight class and is looking to put another stamp on his career. The Men’s Wrestling team opened their season by competing against three division one opponents from Queens University, Oregon State University and the University of North Carolina. The wrestling season runs all the way until March of 2024 and students should be prepared for this team to make a real statement this year.  

Greensboro College’s basketball programs begin their seasons in the month of November and will compete through winter break until February. Both the men’s and women’s squads will have new leaders this year as both teams welcome new head coaches. The men’s team will begin the Jim Boone era of GC basketball. Jim Boone is a lifelong college coach who had tremendous success wherever he went. He is the fifth winningest coach in NCAA D2 history and has taken his teams to a dozen NCAA tournament appearances. Look for Coach Boone to have an immediate impact on the men’s basketball teams as they try and improve upon last season where they finished below .500.  

On the women’s side, Greensboro College hired Laquanda Dawkins-Prince as the new head coach of our dominant women’s basketball team. Coach Prince is the embodiment of a basketball lifer, as she played four years at the University of North Carolina where she won three ACC Championships. Following the end of her playing career in 1999, Prince immediately got into coaching. Over the past 20+ years, Coach Prince has inserted herself into every level of collegiate basketball. Her resume includes stops at the University of Iowa, Gardner-Webb, Florida International University, Kennesaw State University and Jacksonville University. Coach Prince will look to keep building a women’s basketball program that has a record of 51-5 over the past two seasons and made it to the NCAA tournament last year.  

Students this winter can expect a more complete men’s basketball team and the continuation of dominance from our women’s squad with both new coaches making an impact. For wrestling, it will be exciting to see what the new women’s team will offer this year, but for the men’s side, look for Josh Wilson to keep leading the way. Before students and faculty go home for break, they should make an effort to go support these teams as each has multiple home games while classes are still in session. While on break, students and faculty should go to the Greensboro College athletic website and follow each team’s social medias for updates on games while away from campus.