Tiyahna Trottier/Photo by Noah Clooten
After only one year with Lake Region State College women’s basketball, Tiyahna Trottier is already moving on to an NCAA program.
Minot State University, which recently hired LRSC head coach Ryan Clark, announced on Thursday that Trottier has joined the program. It’s a natural fit, given her connection with Clark and the success she had during her freshman season.
Trottier led the LRSC women’s basketball team with 307 points, narrowly ahead of sophomore Brooke Kleinig, who recently committed to St. Mary’s University. Her 9.6 points per game led the team as well.
She only improved as the season went on. Her performance in the early going was less consistent, but there was a game on Jan. 24 where she really found her footing. She even “found her passion again,” as she put it, helped by a voluntary skills day that the team held following a frustrating loss.
She said at the time that she wanted to get recruited by a four-year university — hopefully a Division I school, but any level would do. Clark had nothing but praise for her, saying that she was only a quarter of the player she was going to become.
Well, now Clark and Trottier are both members of an NCAA basketball program. It’s Division II, not Division I, but Trottier’s situation is unique from her teammates in that she transferred after only one year of junior college, not two. That means she still has three years of eligibility remaining.
Trottier is the fourth member of the 2023-24 LRSC women’s basketball team to get recruited by an NCAA university. Kelsey Crossan committed to Gardner-Webb, a Division I school, while the season was still going on. Since the season ended, Kleinig and Kyla Fitzgerald have both committed to Division II schools: St. Mary’s and Ursuline, respectively.
While the other three transfers were Australian sophomores whose time in junior college had run out, Trottier is a North Dakota native who could have played another year for LRSC. She’s from Belcourt, a town up north, located between Minot and Devils Lake. She has two high school teammates who play for MSU in Amya Gorneau and Maya Aguilar.
The Royals finished third in the Mon-Dak Athletic Conference this season, and their success is already paying major dividends. Trottier is now the seventh NCAA player among the two teams that Clark coached in Devils Lake. Success hasn’t always been easy for the LRSC sports programs, which have experienced numerous losing seasons recently in men’s basketball, baseball and softball. But Clark developed a winning program during his short time with LRSC, and now both he and a handful of his players will be contributing at the NCAA level.
