Former Lady Indian helps lead college to National Championships
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Former Lady Indian helps lead college to National Championships
By Shane Gilreath
“You can take a girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl, said former Oneida Lady Indian Katelyn Stiltner, crediting her Scott County roots with much of her success on the basketball court. The OHS standout recently helped lead Kentucky’s Centre College to glory when the Danville-based school topped perennial rival Millsaps College to capture the Southern Athletic Association Conference (SAA) Championship. In what can only be called fated, during the previous two post seasons, the Centre Colonels had faced off with Millsaps in the final, coming up short both times. With a daunting history, 2025 was sure to be a game for the ages. With Stiltner in foul trouble, the Colonels played from behind for much of the tightly contested championship game, before the second seeded Colonels finally broke through, outlasting top-seed Millsaps to win the SAA title – the first in school history – with a final score of 61-57.
“My team and I were on cloud 9,” Stiltner told SCN. “When the final buzzer went off, my team rushed the court, and everyone was hugging each other. We got t-shirts that said, “SAA Champs,” and everyone wore theirs home because we didn’t want the celebration to end.”
Centre’s feat was a huge accomplishment for the school, who boasts 25 NCAA Division III men’s and women’s teams, but it also represented the attainment of a goal for Stiltner and her teammates, who have helped turn around the Colonel’s success during their four years of college play. Stiltner told SCN that she feels the team’s hard work – pain, blood, and tears, she said – having finally put Centre back on the map.
“My coach always says, ‘Leave the program better than you found it,’” Stiltner recalled. “I can say with certainty that Anna, Bailey, Emma, and I (the team’s seniors) have done exactly that.”
With Centre’s historic win – a day Stiltner calls “honestly, the best day of my life” – she and her team earn an automatic birth into the NCAA Division III Women’s Basketball Tournament. They faced Illinois Wesleyan in the first round on March 7th in Salem, Virginia.
It’s a matchup where, Katelyn admits, her team has nothing to lose. “We are the underdogs in the fight,” she told SCN, “so there’s no pressure on us. Illinois Wesleyan is a tough match up, but if we go out there and execute, while playing to the best of our abilities, we will be able to walk away knowing we did the best we could, win or lose.”
But for Stiltner, the lessons of this journey extend beyond the court: they are lessons in teamwork, believing in yourself, working for your goals, and inspiring that in others.
“Unmotivated people will never reach their goals,” said the athlete. “I play for the little girl who fell in love with the game all those years ago. I play to make her proud. I play to inspire the younger generations. “
Whatever the future holds against Illinois Wesleyan, Stiltner surely has achieved that goal – her nieces and cousins, she told SCN, already look up to her – and she’ll always have the story of the day she was the SAA Champion. “It is something I have dreamed of since I began playing sixteen years ago,” she said.