Kennedy and Walters bring home All-Heart honors for 2025-26 season

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Coming off a season that saw the Clarke University women's basketball team earn four more regular season wins and two more Heart of America Athletic Conference wins, the Pride had two players named to All-Heart teams, conference officials announced on Thursday morning.

Those two are senior guard Hailey Walters, who earned Third Team All-Heart in her second season at CU as her first All Conference honor as a member of the Pride, and junior guard Zoe Kennedy, who received All-Heart First Team recognition for the second-straight season since transferring to Clarke prior to the 2024-25 season.

Kennedy, a Cedar Rapids, Iowa native, currently sits as the eighth leading scorer in the NAIA with a final season points per game avarage of 20.9 and finished the regular season with the second-best mark in the Heart behind Player of the Year Kylie Diaz of Peru State. 

That scoring average was a 2.5 points per game improvement from her 2024-25 final mark and is the second-best season scoring average in Clarke women's basketball history, splitting the two best seasons from CU Hall of Famer and current Dean of Academic Affairs Deann (Trapp) Petitgout with Petitgout's school record still safe at 22.4 from 1997-98 but Kennedy's 2025-26 surpasses Petitgout's 1998-99 average of 20.7.

Finishing this season with a career point total of 1,118 and scoring over 500 points in her first two seasons as a member of the Pride, Kennedy projects to finish her career as a top-five scorer in program history in just three seasons in Dubuque after a second season that not only improved in her scoring average, but also improved on essentially every stat including field goal percentage (48.3%), three point shooting percentage (36.5%), rebounds per game (7.6), assists per game (4.5), steals per game (1.7), and blocked shots per game (0.8).

Along with her All-Heart First team selection, Kennedy also earned four weekly honors from the Heart during the 2025-26 season, including three Offensive Player of the Week nods on Nov. 10, Jan. 19, and Feb. 2 along with also earning the Defensive Player of the Week honor on Jan. 19 to sweep the award week with her best game scoring game of the season finishing at 34 points against Waldorf on Nov. 6 that led to the Nov. 10 honor then she also recorded her second career triple-double at William Woods on Jan. 17, finishing with 20 points, 15 rebounds, and 10 assists helping her earn the double recognition on Jan. 19 as she added four blocked shots and four steals in that game for one of the best all around games in program history.

Walters, a Sterling, Ill. native, was also a player who significantly improved on her statistics from her first season as a member of the Pride into year two as her 13.3 points per game average was a full three-point improvement on her scoring average while she shot 40.9 percent from the field, a four-plus percent improvement, 78.8 percent from the free throw line, a 10.4 percent improvement, and 37.2 percent from three point range, a 6.2 percent improvement and also the eighth-best mark in Clarke women's basketball history with a minimum of 40 makes from deep.

Beyond just her scoring ability, Walters became a better rebounder for CU in 2025-26, upping her season average from 3.1 last year to a full 4.0 rebounds per game this season at the guard position while playing a similar minutes per game average at 30.1 after playing 29.2 minutes per game in 2024-25 as she also produced 1.2 assists per game, 0.9 steals per game, and 0.1 blocks per game.

Over the 28-game schedule, Walters only scored under 10 points seven times as her best scoring stretch of the season came during the winter break portion of the schedule, starting with a then career-high tying 23 points in a win over Central Methodist on Dec. 13 and ending with a new career-high 28 points on Jan. 12 at Haskell with one game in single digits mixed in but other games of 19, 17, 18, and 22 over that seven-game stretch.

Full Heart Conference Honors Release: https://heartofamericaconference.com/sports/wbkb/2025-26/releases/20260226f7fcb2

Clarke women's basketball finished 2025-26 with a 15-13 overall record, improving form 11-18 in 2024-25 while going 11-9 in the Heart after just winning nine conference games in 2024-25, but finished in ninth place in the Heart regular season standings to miss out on postseason play.

Walters is the lone senior graduating from the Pride roster as they expect to return everyone else on the 2025-26 roster to build off of the improvements made during the season and from season-to-season.