(Autumn McPherson Photo)
For stellar true freshman Jane Rumpf, it started slow at first.
The Denver, Colorado product wasn’t even playing more than nine minutes a game in the month of November for head coach Heather Ezell’s basketball team, which slogged out to a 3-4 start in the first month of the season.
It wasn’t like Rumpf was expecting to play a ton of minutes this season, though. She thought she would have to patiently wait her turn, like many freshmen do when first entering a new program.
“I came in with low expectations of me playing just so I wouldn’t have negative confidence coming in,” Rumpf said.
Rumpf was a standout basketball player for Regis Jesuit High School in Denver, where she played at the highest classification for high school basketball in Colorado. There, she was twice selected as a First Team Continental League honoree in her final two seasons. The potential to play a big role for the Cowgirls in her first collegiate season was clearly there, she just had to see it through.
That typical freshman timeline quickly became hurried along, as Rumpf steadily began to see an uptick in minutes. With the unfortunate news of junior guard Kati Ollilainen missing the season due to an injury she suffered in the preseason, somebody was going to have to step up in her absence. Rumpf was starting to prove to be that person.
Rumpf made her first career start at home against San Diego State in a rematch of last year’s Mountain West championship game. Rumpf’s efforts helped the Cowgirls play a close game against the first-place Aztecs, as she finished with double-figure points for the first time in her career while also tallying three blocks on the defensive end.
“It was definitely intimidating,” Rumpf said of that defining opportunity. “I’ve never started in that position before at this level, especially against such a big opponent.
“Knowing in the back of my head that the coaches have this much faith in me, I need to believe it for myself as well. Even my teammates, they were just pouring love on me the whole week, just pouring confidence onto me and tha truly made it so much easier.”
Her performance against the best team in the league seemed to spark the upstart freshman, who has developed into one of the Cowgirls’ most lethal three-point threats and a lock-down defender. Rumpf was recently crowned the Mountain West Player of the Week after the Cowgirls fired off three straight wins, exemplifying her improbable upsurge from a bench role player to one of the most impactful players on the roster.
11 points in the first quarter for @janerumpf3 🔥 pic.twitter.com/HvEMV90qyX
— Wyoming Cowgirl Basketball (@wyo_wbb) January 17, 2026
“Coaches [have] endless confidence in me, telling me to never stop shooting,” Rumpf said. “So, hearing and knowing that I have the green light is an insane boost of confidence and is always in the back of my mind.
Rumpf’s impact hasn’t gone unnoticed by her coaches and teammates, either.
“We knew she had the ability, for her it was just kind of [about] growing,” Ezell said of Rumpf’s growth through the season. “Any freshman has to understand, just the pace of the game, the confidence, and everything that goes with it.
“Once she figured that out, we’ve just seen her continue to run with it.”
Rumpf’s initial starts came against three of the top four teams in the league, so they didn’t initially translate to winning results. Since wrapping up a brutal six game conference losing stretch, the Cowgirls have strung together three consecutive wins, with Rumpf playing a big factor in all three. Through that three game stretch, she has averaged 14 points, eight rebounds and two blocks per game. Rumpf has also hit 10 threes through that stretch.
Not bad for a true freshman.
“We need her to be aggressive and be a big part of this team, and it’s just awesome to see a freshman like that give such a big impact for us,” senior Malene Pedersen–who won the Mountain West Freshman of the Year in 2023–said of Rumpf.
Rumpf and the Cowgirls will put their recent three-game winning streak to the test against Fresno State at home tonight. The two teams already met this season, with the Bulldogs taking the first contest by a score of 53-36. Rumpf scored three points and grabbed only one rebound in that one–but has seemed like a completely different player since that one was played just over a month ago on December 20.
Rumpf is confident that her team will continue their winning ways as they approach March.
“We are only going uphill, I think everyone has realized that,” Rumpf said, “and once everyone starts clocking it a little bit more then we can realize how much we can do in the tournament.”
