City of Basketball Love

By Gavin Riley
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(Ed. Note: This article is part of our 2023-24 season coverage, which will run for the six weeks preceding the first official games of the year on Nov. 6. To access all of our high school and college preview content for this season click here.)

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Less than a year after sustaining a season-ending injury, Chloe Welch is set to be a key piece for her new team.

Welch, a 5-foot-9 guard who transferred from Davidson College to Saint Joseph’s in April, suffered the injury just seven games into the 2022 season. As she was going up to catch an inbounds pass, a defender shoved her mid-air, resulting in an awkward landing that caused a fracture in her foot.

Along with the initial thought that her final season had been cut short, the injury was especially tough on Welch because of the person that she is. A full-time starter for the Wildcats for four of her five seasons at Davidson, she was a major part of their plans for 2022-23, and suddenly had to just watch it all play out. 

“Injuries are hard for anyone, and it was tough for me because I’m a very busy-bodied type of person,” Welch said. “With recovery, you would get a little bit better but you’re never fully healed until you are fully healed. So, it was kind of tough but I learned a lot from it and I feel stronger from it.”

Playing college basketball again was an afterthought for Welch, until it wasn’t.

After the injury, Welch’s coach at Davidson informed her that she had a year of eligibility remaining, which took her by surprise. For her to no longer have eligibility, she would have had to appear in nine games. Given the option, it was no question — she wanted to play her final year. 

Welch has been around the game of basketball since a young age. As a baby, her dad would take her to watch him shoot buckets at the local park. He would bring her in a carriage, place her at halfcourt facing the basket he was shooting on, and she would just watch. 

“I always loved watching him play,” Welch said.

That love for watching her dad play quickly turned into a love of her own for playing, which she had one more shot to do. But after completing her undergraduate in the spring — and Davidson not offering graduate programs — Welch had to look elsewhere to continue playing.

So, where better to look than a team that’s familiar with her game? St. Joe’s was not only a fellow Atlantic 10 program, but one primed to be good. Cindy Griffin’s Hawks are coming off a 20-win season, with most of their rotation back — save for its starting backcourt, as Katie Jekot graduated and Olivia Mullins transferred to James Madison. 

Right off the bat, Welch had a good feeling about the Hawks. Between the interactions with the coaching staff and their care for her early on in the process, her eventual decision to head up to Philly seemed evident.

“I loved the coaching staff, like even just from phone calls before I visited I had a really good feeling about them,” Welch said. “The way they think about basketball, the way that I think about basketball…They had a really great energy about them. They seemed like they really cared about me from the start which is pretty cool. And on top of that, their personalities and connection as coaches and their love for their own team is something that I wanted to be a part of.”

For Welch, her focus leading up to the season has been getting her foot ready to begin the season. After not performing basketball movements for a couple months as she let her foot heal, she knew she had to work diligently to get it right, spending time in Philly over summer to continue her rehab.

“I was doing a lot of foot rehab and working on rebuilding the small muscles in my foot,” Welch said. “[Also] reacclimating my right leg in general and foot to the pressure of exploding laterally and jumping up in the air.”

But in her short amount of time in the city — despite it being much different then Davidson (N.C.) and Colorado Springs (Colo.), where she is from — she has quickly found happiness within her new team.

“It is a big city, quite different from Davidson,” Welch said. “But I’m happy because I’ve built, already, really great friendships and for me, as long as I have people I enjoy being around, I’ll be happy.”

Regarding her skills on the court, Welch had been a focal point in Davidson’s offense and now looks to bring her three-level scoring to the Hawks. In 115 games with the Wildcats, she averaged 8.6 points per game and currently sits just 16 points shy of 1,000 career points. Her best season came in the COVID-shortened 2020-21 campaign, where she averaged 16.2 ppg and hit 34.5% from 3-point range.

Expected to start, Welch might not need to average that much on a team that returns its top three scorers, but another double-digit threat in the lineup will make the Hawks that much more dangerous.

“Whether it’s me cutting to the basket, shooting the ball, passing the ball to my teammates or getting a stop on defense,” she said, “they’re the type of coaches where they have the ability to tell me what they want and I’ll do it for them.”