WHITEWATER — The night before Iowa phenom Caitlin Clark became the NCAA Division I women’s basketball career scoring leader, a different long-standing record was broken in Kachel Gymnasium on the UW-Whitewater campus with much less fanfare.
Aleah Grundahl’s pursuit of history was so quiet, in fact, she didn’t know about it until well after the fact. Grundahl learned after the game had ended that Wednesday night that she’d become the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference women’s basketball career scoring leader.
Grundahl’s chase of a record that had stood for nearly three decades had been on the radar of Angela Kelm, the assistant athletic director for sports information at Whitewater, for a while. Kelm gave Warhawks coach Keri Carollo a heads-up in early February as Grundahl got closer to the record Arlene Meinholz of UW-Eau Claire had held since 1995. Grundahl’s parents, Todd and Lori, had even been made aware so they could savor the moment.
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The eventual record holder? She was kept in the dark and doesn’t seem at all bothered by it being a secret.
The thing you quickly learn about Grundahl, a former DeForest standout who’s closing out a phenomenal run at Whitewater, is she’d rather put off any talk of what she’s done with the Warhawks until after her career is over. The fifth-year senior has more important business on her agenda: No. 9 Whitewater (22-4) opens the NCAA Division III tournament Friday with a game against visiting Minnesota Morris.
“Yes, all the individual accolades are special and something that will be talked about,” Grundahl said. “But really at the end of the day it’s more about team, what we’re doing.”
Carollo, who’s in her 22nd season at Whitewater and has led the Warhawks to four national semifinal appearances and a pair of runner-up finishes, thought Grundahl would be a great player.
“But I just didn’t know how fast,” Carollo said.
The first sign Grundahl wasn’t a typical newcomer came when she’d pull aside Carollo to ask questions. Carollo quickly noticed Grundahl had a high basketball IQ. And the fact she wasn’t shy about seeking knowledge was rare for a young player but shouldn’t have been all that surprising considering Grundahl grew up in a family of coaches.
“My mindset was to go in each day and make the people around me better even if I was a little freshman running around on the court,” Grundahl said.
Grundahl ended up starting as a freshman and never left the lineup. She’s played in 127 games, a WIAC record, and started in every one of them.
The 6-foot forward averaged 10.1 points as a freshman, 14.3 in a 2020-21 campaign shortened by the COVID-19 pandemic, 16.2 the next season, 14.3 last season and 20.2 this season. Carollo said Grundahl has added a little something to her game each offseason.
“She works hard every day,” Carollo said. “There’s not a day that goes by that she doesn’t give her best effort, so it translates from practice to how she plays in the game. It’s no different. You have players that can play super hard one day and the next day they’re just really flat and not really getting after it, but she’s the same every single day.”
Grundahl, a three-time captain, is wrapping up her undergraduate degree in early childhood education and spends most days substitute teaching in either Whitewater or Fort Atkinson.
Carollo pulled aside Grundahl midway through this season and reminded her to have fun.
“I feel really lucky to be her coach,” Carollo said about Grundahl, who scored a program-record 39 points in a game against UW-La Crosse this season. “Not having her in the gym is going to be really weird.”
Grundahl sits at 1,864 career points heading into her final postseason with the Warhawks. She was named the WIAC Player of the Year this week for the third time, becoming the first women’s player to accomplish that feat.
These five seasons have gone by fast, Grundahl said. She also made it clear that she didn’t want to spend much time reflecting, not with the urgency of one more postseason right in front of her.
“I knew it was going to take a lot of work just because of (this program’s) success,” Grundahl said. “I didn’t want to back down from that. I knew I was able to do that hard work, and I think today I can say that I did do that hard work. But it’s not over yet.”