It has been more than five decades, but Kim Hansen and Marcia (Visser) Beutel can still recall certain moments from a historic night in mid-December when their Hudsonville Unity Christian girls basketball team accomplished a tremendous feat.

On Dec. 15, 1973, at East Kentwood High School, the teammates helped the Crusaders win the first MHSAA Girls Basketball Finals championship in Class B. 

Unity Christian defeated Saginaw MacArthur 49-45 before a crowd of 1,000.

“i just remember the team, the bus ride out there, and I remember just how excited we were to be together and what we had accomplished as a group,” Hansen said. “Our parents and friends were such big supporters through the whole process, and when I think back I see faces of pure joy.”

A total of 629 schools participated in that first tournament, which like now lasted three weeks and was divided into four classifications.

Cindy Masselink scored 17 points and Deb Aukeman added 16 points to lead the Crusaders to the championship win.

“For us, it was an excitingly significant day because we had been working hard throughout the season, and we, as women, could be the first winners of a state championship for our school and the state,” Beutel said. “A lot of us had been playing together since the sixth grade, and that camaraderie, that friendship, that teamwork and the work we had put in was going to end with a state championship.

“We were very blessed to be there, and we also knew that we were pioneers and trailblazers in the game.”

The Crusaders consisted of 11 girls, three managers and head coach Susan Contant.

An interesting sidenote from the Class B title game: As the home team, Unity Christian was to wear white uniforms. But the Crusaders didn’t own those.

“There were limited resources for women's sports back then so we had to wear the boys uniforms for the state championship,” Beutel said. “They didn't fit well so we had to wear T-shirts underneath them.”

One thing the 1973 squad possessed was size, which proved to be a benefit as the 3-point shot didn’t yet exist.

“We took each tournament game as it came to us and just kind of did our thing,” Hansen said. “I look back at our pictures, and we were huge. We had a starting five of 6-foot plus, and we were a big team. That definitely worked in our favor, and I really don't think that we were going to be denied.”

Beutel and Hansen, both 69, are organizing a night to recognize this special group of women.

It will take place Dec. 11 during a Unity Christian girls and boys varsity game night.

“We are all much older and lives have happened and we are in different places, but I’m hoping that many of the teammates will come back for that,” Hasen said. “I know our head coach and her husband are going to come back for that, and I think that is just amazing. I haven't seen Sue since 1973.

“I got to see some of my teammates when we were recognized at Central Michigan for the 30-year anniversary, and I’m looking forward to seeing who is going to be able to make it and hoping that many do.”

Beutel lives in Toronto with her husband, Robert. She recently visited her old high school.

“They had a list of all the state championships on the wall, and the first one was us,” she said. “That was very emotional for me to see that, to see that recognition.”  

Beutel met her husband at the University of Michigan, and they had three kids. One of their daughters, Sophie, played Division I basketball at Brown.  

Beutel moved to Toronto in 1987 and coached basketball in a recreational league while helping grow the game. She was president of the Toronto Basketball Association, which has surged to 1,000 athletes.

The country needed to push for basketball representation and now has the NBA’s Toronto Raptors and the Toronto Tempo, currently playing its inaugural season in the WNBA. 

“Back then it was a hockey country, so I had to search for basketball in Toronto,” Beutel said. “I got involved in it and expanded it on the girls side and always coached my kids.”

Now retired after a career as a health care executive, Beutel and her husband love adventures and have traveled to several countries. “There is so much more to experience in life,” she said.

While she stays active by playing tennis, cycling and kayaking, Beutel also plays clarinet in a band and volunteers at a cancer support group as a peer counselor after enduring two bouts of breast cancer.

After high school, Hansen played four years of basketball at Grand Valley State University before being drafted by the San Francisco Pioneers of the Women’s Professional Basketball League.

She played there one season before being traded to the Chicago Hustle. She also spent time with the Minnesota Fillies before the league went bankrupt and disbanded in 1981.

“I think I made $7,000 for my salary and the season was very short, but it was such an amazing experience and San Francisco was a very good franchise,” Hansen said. “They had good ownership and we flew all over the place and stayed in really nice hotels. They had a good practice facility, and we were treated really well.”

Prior to a game scheduled in Chicago on March 21, 1981, Hansen and her Fillies teammates walked off the court before the starting lineups were announced in a protest over unpaid salaries.

“We planned to do our warm-up, go back to the locker room and then get back in vans and drive back to Minnesota because we weren’t getting paid,” Hansen said. “That was our way of showing that we were not happy with ownership and the only way that we could make a stand.”

Despite the disbanding of the league, Hansen said lifelong relationships were formed.

“The beauty of playing sports is relationships, and even relationships that we developed at Unity are still so strong, and relationships I developed while playing pro ball are still very active and to me that is the beauty of playing sports,” she said. 

After the WPBL, Hansen went to graduate school at Lamar University in Texas and eventually became an educator and coach at several colleges and high schools, including Wichita State and North Central College (Ill.).

Her final stop was Cleveland Heights High School, where she coached and taught physical education and health. She lives in Kirtland, Ohio, and retired from teaching and coaching in 2024 although she still works part-time in the transportation department.

“I love coaching and I always loved practice,” Hansen said. “I just finished working with four seventh-grade boys and helping them with fundamentals and skills. I just enjoy that part of it so much.”

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PHOTOS (Top) The 1973 Unity Christian girls basketball team poses for a team photo with its championship trophy; Kim Hansen (20) and Marcia Beutel (12) then and now. (Middle) Unity coach Susan Contant holds the championship trophy surrounded by her players after the clinching victory. (Below) Hansen stands for a photo with her San Francisco Pioneers teammates during the 1979-80 season. (Photos provided by Kim Hansen and Marcia Beutel.)