By Sara Hinds
Senior guard Mak Hatcliff's newest honor comes with national prestige. Hatcliff is recognized in the 2024 Ring of Honor at the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame, where her number 23 jersey will be on display until October 2025. The annual honor recognizes more than 100 collegiate and high school female All-Americans across the country.
Hatcliff has always operated at a high level. The Beatrice, Nebraska, native was named GPAC Freshman of the Year (2021-22). In her junior season (2023-24) Hatcliff was named GPAC Player of the Year, led the conference in scoring for the third straight season and became Doane women's all-time leading scorer. The stats and honors pile up after every season, but Hatcliff remains driven and humble.
“She's always been Mak in the way that she approaches things, it’s just that she's doing it at a really, really high rate the older she gets,” head women’s basketball coach Ryan Baumgartner said. “She doesn't change her approach based on her successes. She's the one who comes into practice and works the hardest all the time, and that's kind of rare.”
A natural leader by action, Hatcliff has grown more comfortable being vocal on the court. Preferably, she leads by action. Baumgartner remembers a recent practice where they switched up teams.
“One of our other players, who's usually on Mak’s team in practice, had to guard Mak for five minutes,” Baumgartner said. “She comes over and goes, ‘Oh my gosh, guys, Mak is so hard to guard. Can somebody else guard her for a little bit? She just never gets tired.’ And that's how hard Mak goes all the time.”
Despite her long list of individual accolades, Hatcliff redirects any attention she receives to the team and larger Doane student-athlete body. Her senior season goal is to make the national tournament as a team. And she considers her greatest accomplishment to be balancing academics (she’s a health sciences major) and athletics. A feat so many of her peers achieve, and “should be acknowledged” for Hatcliff said.
While the number 23 held no significance for Hatcliff when she picked it her freshman year at Doane (she wore number 12 in high school) it certainly does now — and will for a long time in the records book, and for a short time in the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame.
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View the 2024-25 Doane women's basketball schedule. The Women's Basketball Hall of Fame is located in Knoxville, Tennessee.
