Lady Spartans win 3rd straight Glacier’s Edge tourney title
No matter what the rest of their final season at Emporia High brings, the seniors on the Lady Spartans will always have their high-threes, the leap in the swimming pool and the other memories that will be rooted in their minds next to the accomplishment of winning three straight Glacier’s Edge Tournament championships.
Emporia earned its three-peat Saturday afternoon at EHS with a title-game win over Manhattan that followed the formula of the Spartans’ first two tournament victories: play airtight defense, hold the opposition in the 20s, execute enough offensively to score in the 40s, close the game without drama. Saturday’s 45-27 win had the happy Spartans giving each other high-threes — high-fives without the index finger and thumb — and marching to the school pool for the hands-joined, in-uniform plunge that comes with every tournament win.
“It’s really exciting,” said senior Hilary Heinrichs, “and you kind of lose perspective of how exciting it really is until you think about, we’ve won a whole tournament three times in a row with different teams. ... And there have been some really tough teams in this, so it’s quite a big accomplishment, and one of the signature accomplishments of our careers, probably.”
Another of Emporia’s seven seniors, Lexi Hileman, secured the tournament MVP award with an 11-point, nine-rebound effort in the title game, while also helping to hold Manhattan post Catherine Carmichael to just two points. Hileman had 39 points in three tournament games and was joined on the All-Tournament team by junior Lindy Arndt, who also had 11 on Saturday. Hileman said the thought of winning the MVP hadn’t occurred to her as the tournament wound down.
“Not at all,” she said. “I was just playing my game. I played good, so I got rewarded for it. But that was the least of my worries. I was worried about the time, and that possession, and that play.”
Just as they had done in wins over Wichita North and Blue Valley, the Spartans slowly built a large lead in the early going. Alli Armitage’s 3-pointer got them started in the first minute, Hileman added two free throws about a minute-and-a-half later to make it 5-0, two Arndt jumpers pushed the lead to 9-2 and Rachelle VanGundy’s guarded 3-pointer in the late stages of the
Lady Spartans win 3rd straight Glacier’s Edge tourney title
By Joey Berlin
berlin@emporiagazette.com
No matter what the rest of their final season at Emporia High brings, the seniors on the Lady Spartans will always have their high-threes, the leap in the swimming pool and the other memories that will be rooted in their minds next to the accomplishment of winning three straight Glacier’s Edge Tournament championships.
Emporia earned its three-peat Saturday afternoon at EHS with a title-game win over Manhattan that followed the formula of the Spartans’ first two tournament victories: play airtight defense, hold the opposition in the 20s, execute enough offensively to score in the 40s, close the game without drama. Saturday’s 45-27 win had the happy Spartans giving each other high-threes — high-fives without the index finger and thumb — and marching to the school pool for the hands-joined, in-uniform plunge that comes with every tournament win.
“It’s really exciting,” said senior Hilary Heinrichs, “and you kind of lose perspective of how exciting it really is until you think about, we’ve won a whole tournament three times in a row with different teams. ... And there have been some really tough teams in this, so it’s quite a big accomplishment, and one of the signature accomplishments of our careers, probably.”
Another of Emporia’s seven seniors, Lexi Hileman, secured the tournament MVP award with an 11-point, nine-rebound effort in the title game, while also helping to hold Manhattan post Catherine Carmichael to just two points. Hileman had 39 points in three tournament games and was joined on the All-Tournament team by junior Lindy Arndt, who also had 11 on Saturday. Hileman said the thought of winning the MVP hadn’t occurred to her as the tournament wound down.
“Not at all,” she said. “I was just playing my game. I played good, so I got rewarded for it. But that was the least of my worries. I was worried about the time, and that possession, and that play.”
Just as they had done in wins over Wichita North and Blue Valley, the Spartans slowly built a large lead in the early going. Alli Armitage’s 3-pointer got them started in the first minute, Hileman added two free throws about a minute-and-a-half later to make it 5-0, two Arndt jumpers pushed the lead to 9-2 and Rachelle VanGundy’s guarded 3-pointer in the late stages of the first made it 12-4 Lady Spartans. With their defense contesting almost every shot attempt, one jumper by Ashley Leihsing and two by Amber Miller were all the Spartans needed to increase their lead to 18-8 by the halftime break.
At the 5:42 mark of the third, Arndt increased the EHS lead to 11 when she was fouled on a turnaround jumper and made the resulting free throw to make it 21-11. An Arndt power move and layin inside and a Hileman jumper from the left baseline helped make it 28-17 by the end of the third.
The Lady Spartans kept their lead in double digits for most of the fourth. Hileman hit a jumper from the right elbow early in the quarter to make the score 30-17, and soon Emporia slowed the game down, forcing Manhattan to start fouling. Emporia made its free throws down the stretch to suppress any thoughts of a comeback; 2-for-2 trips to the line by Miller, Armitage, Arndt and Armitage again helped the lead reach as high as 19 by the end of the game.
Manhattan (7-5) shot just 23 percent (12-for-52) from the floor. Staci Thomas led the Indians with nine points, but shot 4-of-17. For Emporia (9-4), Armitage had nine points to back Hileman and Arndt and was a perfect 6-for-6 at the foul line. Heinrichs didn’t score but joined Hileman with nine rebounds.
Before joining his team’s jump in the pool, EHS coach Bill Nienstedt had plenty of good things to say about his senior class — Armitage, Heinrichs, Hileman, Leihsing, Miller, Janae Scheve and VanGundy — and their Glacier’s Edge trifecta.
“What a great group,” Nienstedt said. “Seven great senior kids. All do something significant to make our basketball team better, and for them to be involved in three straight Glacier’s Edge championships — first of all, it’s quite an accomplishment, and it’s a credit to them. Because some people out of that class have been involved directly in each of the three titles. I’m happy for them. It couldn’t have happened to a better bunch.”
In the rest of Saturday’s tournament-closing action, Leavenworth defeated Wyandotte in the seventh-place game 59-24; Seaman defeated Wichita North 49-45 in the fifth-place game; and in the third-place game, Olathe East beat Blue Valley 54-53 in overtime, on a buzzer-beating 30-plus-foot, banked-in 3-pointer by East’s Chelsea Harris.
Emporia 45, Manhattan 27
Manhattan 4 4 9 10 — 27
Emporia 12 6 10 17 — 45
Manhattan (7-5) — Donohoue 0-2 2-2 2, Kennedy 1-9 0-0 2, Thomas 4-17 0-4 9, Massanet 3-5 0-0 6, Carmichael 1-6 0-1 2, Nelson 2-4 0-1 4, Stitt 0-6 0-0 0, Woods 0-0 0-0 0, Ehie 1-1 0-0 2, Miller 0-2 0-0 0. Totals 12-52 2-8 27.
Emporia (9-4) — Armitage 1-6 6-6 9, Miller 2-2 2-3 6, Arndt 4-10 3-3 11, Heinrichs 0-0 0-2 0, Hileman 3-10 5-9 11, VanGundy 1-2 3-4 6, Leihsing 1-1 0-0 2, Kolmer 0-0 0-0 0, Scheve 0-0 0-2 0, Waldner 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 12-31 19-29 45.
3-point goals — Manhattan 1-14 (Thomas 1-3, Kennedy 0-4, Stitt 0-4, Nelson 0-1, Donohoue 0-1, Miller 0-1), Emporia 2-8 (Armitage 1-5, VanGundy 1-2, Hileman 0-1).