NORTHAMPTON — Each member of the Smith College women’s basketball team climbed up the ladder to cut down a piece of the net on the home side of Ainsworth Gymnasium following the No. 1 Pioneers’ 79-66 victory over No. 6 MIT in the NEWMAC championship game on Sunday afternoon.

It’s a ritual Smith has now done an unprecedented five times in a row dating back to 2020. Once the players finished, the coaches took a turn maneuvering up the ladder to snip some nylon. There were two pieces left to cut down, the perfect amount for the two coaches who hadn’t yet gone – assistant coach Kat Puda and head coach Lynn Hersey.

Hersey whispered something to Puda as she handed her the scissors. Puda scaled up and cut the rest of the net off – per Hersey’s request – before swinging it around and throwing it down to the 16 screaming Smith players looking up at her. Hersey wore the brightest smile in the gym as she clapped and celebrated yet another conference crown.

That one simple gesture – letting Puda have the spotlight atop the ladder – might be meaningless to many, but it epitomizes everything Hersey has built her powerhouse program on: selflessness. And because the longtime Pioneers coach, now in her 18th season patrolling the sidelines, preaches it every day, Smith continues to rewrite the history books.

“I’m filled with gratitude for the teams before this team, obviously this team, the coaches I’ve had the last five years,” Hersey said. “It’s a choice to be good. You have habits that you do every single day that lead you to a moment like this. I’m just super grateful that I’ve been surrounded by players and coaches alike that choose to be great. They’re willing to put in the time, discipline and choices in their daily lives that lead to moments like this.” 

Seniors Jane Loo and Jazmyn Washington only know what it’s like to win conference titles. The two came to Smith as freshmen for the 2021-22 season. Since then, the Pioneers hoisted the 2022, 2023, 2024 and now the 2025 NEWMAC trophy. They are now the third consecutive senior class to triumph in every conference tournament they’ve played in.

“It’s definitely an experience that not a lot of college athletes get,” Loo said. “It’s a unique experience here. It means everything to me to be at such a high-performing and well-rounded school. To break history and win as an all-women’s college, it’s not something a lot of colleges get to do. So it definitely means a lot.”

Of course, as is the case with every championship game played, Smith had to earn its celebration. During the first two meetings with the Engineers this season, the Pioneers won both contests by an average margin of 31.5 points. They dominated MIT each instance.

But it didn’t happen a third time on Sunday.

MIT stormed out to a 19-9 lead after a Sarah Berman stepback 3-pointer swished through early in the second quarter. Smith responded with a 12-3 run to get within one, but the Engineers maintained their lead at halftime – a 26-25 edge. It marked just the second time all season that the Pioneers didn’t go into the locker rooms ahead of their opponent.

“When you’re facing a team the third time, you have to just know that everything you did before kind of just goes out of the window,” Hersey said. “You know each other really well, and certainly in a championship they’re going to come out battling and that’s exactly what they did. It was good for us to feel that type of competition, and I thought we kept our composure and made some halftime adjustments that really helped us.”

Smith shot just 21 percent from the field in the first quarter (trailed 14-7), but picked it up by going 8-for-13 in the second – many of its looks coming from around the rim. And just as she did during the first quarter of the Pioneers’ NEWMAC semifinal win on Friday, Ally Landau took the game over. She dished two sweet passes in transition, one to Ella Sylvester and the other to Washington, that led to easy layups – the latter giving Smith its first lead of the game – before scoring five straight points. Landau then found sophomore Maggie Fleming, who was terrific off the bench on Sunday, for another fastbreak bucket.

Landau, who earned NEWMAC tournament MVP, capped off her dominant five-minute stretch with two more field goals to give her nine points and three assists in the third quarter alone, and the Pioneers finally had some separation (51-42) heading to the final 10 minutes of play.

The two teams traded a pair of baskets to open the fourth, but MIT wouldn’t go away. The Engineers scored nine straight points to retake the lead at the 5:34 mark, with Kaya Weiser connecting on a triple to make it 56-55 in favor of the visitors.

“We knew it wasn’t going to be easy,” Loo said. “When we’re down, our team is really good at grinding it out on defense and staying the course. We don’t let the score dictate how we play. Understanding that we can do this play by play, possession by possession, that’s what kept us in it.”

Two and a half minutes later and now ahead by one, Smith’s championship pedigree kicked in. It was winning time.

Sylvester and Landau each scored to put the Pioneers in front 66-61 with just over two minutes remaining, and the majority of the work the rest of the way came at the charity stripe. Smith went 12-for-13 from the line in the fourth quarter, and made its last 10 to seal title No. 5 in a row.

“We got some big shots from some of our big players, and that’s what it takes to win championships and NCAA tournament games,” Hersey said. “You need your big players to show up and make plays. There’s no style points for winning by 30. Your goal is to find a way to win… We got some end-of-game execution elements in today, which was good. I give a lot of credit to MIT for how they came in and approached this game. They battled. But our group handled the fourth. We made our foul shots, we didn’t turn the ball over and we made the plays we needed to.”

Four players scored at least 14 points for the Pioneers. Sylvester (five rebounds) had a game-high 18 points, Hannah Martin (9-for-9 FTs) and Landau (five assists, four rebounds) each tossed in 17 points while Fleming played her second-most minutes of the year (28), putting up 14 points and recording team-highs in rebounds (7), steals (4) and blocks (2).

Throughout the season, Smith hadn’t made less than three 3-pointers in a game. Its ability to spread the floor and knock down the long ball has been a weapon all year long. The Pioneers went 0-for-12 from 3 on Sunday.

So instead they pounded the ball inside, scoring 56 points in the paint and shooting 64 percent from inside the arc. They found other ways to get the job done.

“I was looking at my teammates on the bench at one point and was like, ‘We haven’t hit a 3 yet,’” Loo said. “But I think that’s just a testament to how skilled we are. If our 3s aren’t going, we’ll have hard takes to the hoop, we’ll get and-ones. It just shows that no predicament that we’re in can cause us to lose. We’ll find different ways to win.”

With the win, Smith College (26-2) earned an automatic bid into the NCAA Division 3 Women’s Basketball tournament. The selection show – where the Pioneers will learn the date, time, location and opponent for their first-round game – is Monday afternoon.