How do Ivy League women’s basketball teams handle final exams?

Princeton head coach Carla Berube and Yale head coach Dalila Eshe told The Next that their players can be found studying during nearly any road trip, whether on the bus or in a hotel conference room. So the studying on these trips was similar to others, except for one thing Eshe noticed. “They were [writing] a lot of papers,” she said.

Seven of the eight Ivy League schools have final exams for the fall semester in December. Dartmouth, which follows the quarter system, is the exception. Final exams for the fall term happen just before Thanksgiving, and winter break stretches from Thanksgiving to the new year.

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Final exam periods tend to be long in the Ivy League: On average, the schools have eight days of exams, and adding in reading periods, that window increases to 11.6 days.

“[I’ve] certainly worked at [schools with] high academics before, but the Ivy League is a beast,” first-year Cornell head coach Emily Garner told The Next in December.

“Nothing is like the Ivy League,” Harvard head coach Carrie Moore told reporters on Dec. 4.

Because of the long exam period, every Ivy women’s basketball team has at least a 10-day gap between games while players finish the term. Some teams have even longer gaps.

	Final exams start	Final exams end	Days of reading period and finals	Days between games
Dartmouth	Nov. 22	Nov. 27	8	13
Harvard	Dec. 11	Dec. 20	16	14
Yale	Dec. 12	Dec. 18	12	20
Penn	Dec. 12	Dec. 19	10	14
Cornell	Dec. 13	Dec. 21	12	14
Columbia	Dec. 13	Dec. 20	11	13
Brown	Dec. 13	Dec. 21	9	11
Princeton	Dec. 14	Dec. 20	15	10

“Being an Ivy League student-athlete teaches you how to grind,” former Dartmouth guard and Princeton head coach Courtney Banghart told Dartmouth Alumni Magazine earlier this year. “… There’s no, ‘I just don’t feel like doing that today’ … just ‘left foot, right foot, breathe, repeat.’ There were times in the middle of exams, or even just with a tough course, when that’s just the best that you can do that day.”

To accommodate the long break for exams, Ivy League teams with finals in December have to cram nonconference games into the month of November. And Ivy teams play more nonconference games — 13 — than many other teams because they have only 14 regular-season conference games.

“The games were happening so quickly in November,” Moore said. “It’s like you can’t even enjoy the win you get because … you got to turn around and play another one, whether it’s the next day or two days later or three days later.”

In contrast, there is more time for practice in December, even after accommodating players’ exam schedules. Ivy coaches are intent on shoring up their teams’ weaknesses before conference play begins on Jan. 4. Moore even has a name for it: “Development December.”

Coaches around the league told The Next they typically have two days of practice, then one day off throughout the exam period, and sometimes two straight days off when players have a lot of tests on certain days. Practices tend to be shorter, but coaches are trying to fit a lot in, so sometimes the intensity goes up.

“This is an opportunity to get better. It’s not just, ‘Let’s make it through finals,’” Columbia head coach and alumna Megan Griffith told reporters in December 2023. “So I think you really have to reframe that mindset with your players [as], ‘Let’s grind a little bit harder right now. And we’ll take off some of the time, but let’s ramp up the intensity.’”

Other coaches sometimes opt for lighter practices during exams. Brown head coach Monique LeBlanc told The Next recently that if players are “fried” one day, she’s fine with mainly scrimmaging rather than running through drills. She wants practices to be productive but also a source of fun amid the stress.

For Moore, whose team has the longest reading and exam period in the conference this year, making sure players don’t get bored in the two weeks between games is also important. She said on Dec. 4 that she was thinking about adding a weeklong 3×3 competition to the beginning of practice to keep her players engaged and excited.

And practice and studying aren’t always at odds.

“It actually helps you, this physical activity, to kind of get out of your head and get some endorphins and stuff for test-taking,” Eshe said.

“It’s something that breaks that monotony up,” LeBlanc said. “… They’re studying their butts off. So to be able to take an hour and a half break is sometimes just what they want.”

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With no games and more off days than usual, Ivy League coaches often use this time to go out on the recruiting trail. Eshe said she and her staff are recruiting especially hard right now amid Yale’s 1-11 start. For some staffs, this period is as busy as any other during the season.

But other coaches said they encourage their staffs to leave early or take breaks this time of year. If LeBlanc’s assistants can fit in holiday shopping or an oil change on an off day because they don’t have to scout an opponent, she’s all for it.

Moore recently had a staff meeting where she reminded everyone that people tend to get run down this time of year and asked them to take care of themselves. Every Harvard staff member has an “accountability partner” who checks in with them about things like whether they’re sleeping enough and making time for exercise or other forms of self-care.

“That balance right now … is really important to make sure we’re operating at a high level because we have to lead our team, and we’ve got to show up at our best, too,” Moore said.

For Dartmouth, the schedule of games and exams is almost reversed. The Big Green’s last game before exams was on Nov. 18, less than two weeks into their season. Head coach Linda Cimino told The Next that she held a few practices during final exams, but it was mostly individual workouts and making sure players maintained their fitness levels.

Exams ended on Nov. 27, and classes don’t start again until Jan. 6, so now Dartmouth is cramming in games to make up for the 13-day break. The team had five games in 11 days from Dec. 1 to Dec. 10, and three were on the road, including a trip to Maryland and Pennsylvania. Now, the team is navigating a stretch of three more road games in three states in a six-day span.

“We’ve set it up in a way that it’s going to make us tired, and [we’ll] learn how to push through that tiredness,” Cimino told reporters at Ivy League media day in October. “And then when we get to conference play, we’re ready to go.”

Between games, there is extra time for player development and rest, since there are no academic demands. “This is the time that we get to really focus on basketball and really lock in and get better,” senior guard Victoria Page told reporters on Dec. 4 after a win at Navy.

Dartmouth alumna and current Columbia assistant coach Cy Lippold told The Next that she loved the month of December when she was in college. “It kind of felt like you were a professional athlete for a month out of the year,” she said. “Because you got per diem, which felt like payment to us. We were like, ‘Oh, money for food!’ We were doing nothing but playing basketball and hanging out with our teammates. … I always read a lot and just did things that I never had time to do in my normal day-to-day. … It was really refreshing.”

Last season, some Dartmouth players told The Next they used the break to catch up on sleep or look for internships. And the first-years filled their time with holiday activities, including building gingerbread houses and watching festive movies.

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The lack of classes to work around also means that road trips can be extended by a few days. Lippold said her teams often departed for December road trips a few days early and spent time exploring the local area. Last season, the Big Green detoured during a road trip to support Banghart when her North Carolina team played UConn in Connecticut.

This season, the team had dinner at sophomore guard Alexandra Eldredge’s house in Virginia during the trip to Navy. And between games at Lafayette and Syracuse this week, Cimino plans to take her players to the American Dream mall in New Jersey and “let them be kids.”

However, Dartmouth’s academic calendar, known as the D-Plan, also compresses the season in other ways, which can make things difficult for the coaching staff. Dartmouth’s fall quarter began two to three weeks after other Ivy League schools had started their semester this year, which meant preseason practice also started late. Anticipating that, Cimino and her staff scheduled their first Division I game for Nov. 13, nine days after they could’ve opened the season, to get more practices in.

Then, after the season ends, some players might be on campus for the spring term, others for the summer term and others for neither, making offseason workouts harder to plan.

“The D-Plan is a challenge,” Cimino said. “… I’m not a huge fan.”

The Ivy League previously had to contend with yet another schedule for final exams. Until 2020-21, Princeton had finals in January. That required conference play to be more compressed. Griffith, who worked at Princeton from 2010 to 2016, said she “absolutely” likes having finals in December better than in January. “Coaching in January with that two-week break is a nightmare,” she added.

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Whenever final exams are scheduled for, they are a gauntlet for Ivy League players. “I think the league does a good job of allowing both of those experiences to work in their own ways,” Lippold said, referring to having exams in November and in December. 

Harvard’s last game before exams was a win over Rhode Island on Dec. 7. Afterward, the ESPN+ broadcast asked senior guard Harmoni Turner how many tests she had coming up.

“We ain’t gonna talk about that!” she replied with a smile. “But go Crimson, though!”