UPDATE: As of 5 p.m. Saturday, St. Paul was 1-1 in tournament play after a 19-18 loss to Trinity Lutheran from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in its opening game Friday and a 24-14 victory over St. Paul, Kingsville, Maryland in consolation play Saturday. St. Paul’s next contest is slated for 5:25 p.m. Eastern Time Saturday. Watch the game live online at lbaa.org.
By Bill Petzold
Editor
MILLINGTON — It’s no Cinderella story, it’s the legend of the Spartans.
After a perfect regular season, the St. Paul Lutheran School girls basketball “A” team rolled through the state tournament before their first setback. The Spartans watched a team comprised of players from Holy Ghost and Trinity Lutheran Schools in Monroe sink late-game free throws to seal the state championship.
But instead of the curtain falling on a one-loss season that produced five tournament championship trophies and a state runner-up, St. Paul has one more chance to compete: a berth in the Lutheran Basketball Association of America LBAA Lutheran National Tournament at Valparaiso University in Valparaiso, Indiana.
The team was set to caravan to the tournament Thursday. The Spartans began play at 4:25 p.m. Friday against Trinity Lutheran School of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. All games are being broadcast live online at lbaa.org. Play continues until the national championship is decided at 3:30 p.m. Sunday at Valparaiso’s Athletics-Recreation Center — dubbed “The ARC” by students — a 5,100-seat arena where Valpo’s NCAA Division I Crusaders host their basketball and volleyball games.
Between the Spartans and the trophy are 31 other teams from places like California, Florida, Idaho, Maryland and Texas. One school, Faith Lutheran Middle School and High School of Las Vegas, Nevada, has an enrollment of 1,570 in grades 6 through 12. St. Paul Lutheran has about 230 kids enrolled in K-8 — and in 2010 the village of Millington had a population of 1,070.
“I was looking at one of the schools in the tournament, and they have three or four teachers for each grade, and some had one teacher for two grades — I watched Hoosiers this weekend,” St. Paul coach Mark Jensen said, laughing, referring to the 1986 movie about a small-town basketball team that defeats teams from much larger schools to win the Indiana state championship.
But while the Spartans are outnumbered, the team’s nine players are a well-organized group and a true team.
“We were 24-0 before we lost our first game in the finals of the state tournament … and it was close until the last minute and a half,” Jensen said. He and Bill Weber help lead the team, while Bill’s wife Carol Weber serves as scorekeeper and Nikki Sherman is the team’s manager.
Jensen said it’s this team’s togetherness that makes it a special group.
“They back each other up; they play as a team,” Jensen said. “It doesn’t matter who’s in, they look out for each other and they back each other up. They’re a very coachable team. Last year we had a really good team too, they went to the state tournament and their record was 18-3 at the end of the year. That team may have had more talent, but this team plays so much more together as a team, and that might be why we’ve gone as far as we have.”
“We have one seventh grader on the team, and our manager is a seventh grader, and the rest are all eighth graders,” Jensen said. “As a B team they were undefeated, so they’ve been a good team for a long time.”
Jensen said Wednesday that excitement was building for the tournament.
“It’s hard to tell, but they’ve been pretty noisy the last couple practices,” Jensen said. “We were an alternate for the national tournament last year. If we would have done better in the state tournament we would have went, but this year we would have been an automatic if we would have won. There were still a couple days if we didn’t know if we were in because we took second instead of first.”
St. Paul Lutheran second grade teacher Carol Weber, who formerly served as the school’s girls athletic director, keeps score for boys and girls basketball.
“It’s the first time that the girls have gone,” Weber said. “Ten years ago and either 12 or 13 years ago there were two boys teams who went (to the national tournament). Our oldest son went 10 years ago.”
Weber emceed a pep assembly Wednesday that was covered by local media and featured The girls on the team were introduced to applause from their classmates: seventh grader Madi Hahn and eight graders McKenna Slough, Gabbie Sherman, Samantha Ayotte, AnnaMae Beckman, Leah Denome, Sydney Bishop, Kaitlyn Ill and Samantha Bishop. Coach Jensen led the kids in a “Go Green/Go White” cheer, and then the first grade class sang a song. The girls gathered on the bleachers, surrounded by their fans as they watched a slide show of highlights from both the boys and girls basketball seasons, followed by a segment filmed by TV-25 at their practice Tuesday.
Weber expressed thanks to the team’s parents, teachers, as well as to St. Paul Lutheran’s Dorcas Society and PTL, Hanlin Funeral Home, Frankenmuth Credit Union — all of whom contributed financially to the team’s trip, as well as to Frankenmuth’s Grasel Graphics, which created a banner for the team with the girls’ numbers and coaches’ names on it.
Player Sydney Bishop said the sendoff from her fellow St. Paul students was greatly appreciated by she and her teammates. She said the team hoped to add a couple wins to its record at the tourney.
“It means a lot,” player Sydney Bishop said. “I definitely wasn’t expecting this much coming into the assembly, but it means a lot that everyone comes together and will do this for you.
“We play as a team and we work together and we never let our our individual egos get in the way of the end result. We put our faith in God and we work together and come together as a team. We’re excited, very very excited. We’re definitely going to try (for the title).”
Bill Petzold is the editor of the Tuscola County Advertiser. He can be reached at petzold@tcadvertiser.com.