ON TO STATE! Kee girls basketball team pays little attention to accolades of fourth-rated Springville on the way to 55-43 Region 4 Championship triumph
STATEBOUND!!! Lady Hawks advance to Class 1A State Tournament with Region 4 Championship ... Members of the 15th-rated Kee girls basketball team display the banner and “Ticket Punched” poster celebrating their Class 1A Region 4 Championship and the State Tournament qualification the Lady Hawks earned with a 55-43 upset triumph over fourth-rated Springville in that regional finals game played Wednesday, February 25 at West Delaware High School in Manchester. The Hawks bolted to a 17-5 headstart by the end of the game’s first quarter and never really took their foot off the gas for the game’s remainder, building as much as a 20-point lead in the third quarter and fighting off a late Oriole surge in the latter minutes of the fourth period to earn the Kee girls basketball program’s third Class 1A State Tournament qualification, with the other two coming during the 2016 and 2018 seasons. Kee’s girls will now open Class 1A State Tournament play as the number-eight seed Wednesday, March 4 at 1:30 p.m. at the Casey’s Center in Des Moines, taking on top-rated and top-seeded Algona Bishop Garrigan, a team that holds a 22-2 season record and is riding a streak of seven consecutive qualifications for the Class 1A State Tournament. Pictured above, left to right, are Head Coach Ben Wagner, team manager Areona Claycomb, Maddie Mauss, Layla Mathis, Josy Connelly, Rylee Mudderman, Lilah Strong, Morgan Mohn, Grace Hornseth, Lillian Kolsrud, Elena Schulte, Addison Winters, Rose Wheeler, Evelynn Dibert, Assistant Coach Pat Wagner, and Maddie Martin. View and find out how to purchase this photo and many more by clicking on the Photos link on this webpage.
Lady Hawks soar higher than touted Orioles to earn program’s third State Tournament qualification
The Kee girls basketball team had its focus solely on the number “one” when they took to the court in the Class 1A Region 4 championship game against Springville Wednesday, February 25 at West Delaware High School in Manchester.
Paying little regard to other numbers, such as 23-1 (Springville’s season record), the number 4 (Springville’s Class 1A ranking coming into the ballgame), and 6’3” (the height of Springville senior Rowan Jacobi, who has committed her basketball talents to the University of South Dakota and scored the 2,000th point of her high school basketball career just a week earlier), the Lady Hawks instead had their focus on playing as “one” team, “one” game at a time, and “one” minute at a time within that “one” game. Their “one” focus included a concentrated game plan designed at limiting Jacobi, which they certainly did in holding her to less than half of her 27 points per game scoring average while also trimming the Orioles’ three-point shooting effectiveness nearly in half as well to hold them to one of their lowest scoring totals of the season on the way to claiming a 55-43 regional championship triumph and advancement to the Class 1A State Tournament for the third time in program history, and for the first time since the 2018 season.
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