The lady Pirates lost their opening round game against Prescott 62-34. Prescott will now advance to play St. Croix Central as the Lady Panthers defeated Webster 57-34.
Looking around the rest of the West Lakeland:
Siren def. Drummond 66-22, Siren moves on to play Shell Lake on Thursday in Siren (hear it on WXCX 105.7)
In a big upset, St. Croix Falls fell to Glenwood City big: 61-47. SCF was the #2 seed, Glenwood City the #7 seed.
Luck lost to Osseo Fairchild big, 73-27.
Unity lost to Colfax 70-23.
Frederic had a first round bye
So all things considered, the West Lakeland had a horrible night. As a conference they were beaten 320-238 and if you take Siren’s game out of the equation it was 298-172! So in the five losses the average beat down was by about 25 points!!! That is really amazing, and not in a good way.
Only Siren won (big) and Frederic is still alive because they received a first round bye. Wow.
I have received a lot of hits regarding the death of St. Croix Falls senior Zach Foeller, an all-conference defensive back and homecoming king. According to this Sentinel article the young man took his own life last week.
If you happen to be one of Zach’s family, friend or someone else who was touched by his life, please accept my condolences, and with this I’m confident I can speak for the entire community of Grantsburg that our prayers are with you.
I did not know Zach personally and only watched him play ball, but anytime a young person takes his or her own life it is about the worst thing loved ones can go through. May God give you peace at this time.
The reason this site has been getting traffic about this subject is because in November I listed the all-conference selections for the Large Lakeland football teams, and Zach was on there so Google pointed people here.
This past Sunday marked the 29th anniversary of the Miracle on Ice. I was very small then and have no first hand memory of the game. That doesn’t stop me from getting goose bumps every time I watch the final seconds of the game and listen to Al Michaels’ famous call. To hear it again, take a look.
Congratulations to the Blizzard girls, they have advanced in the playoffs by beating New Richmond Thursday night 1-0. The Blizz now travel to Baldiwin to meet the number one seed in the region, River Falls on Tuesday night, game time 7 pm. Bracket
The Blizzard boys lost their game to number on seed Superior, 7-2 on Thursday night. The Blizzard started this season off slowly, but gained momentum and finished well, winning their opening playoff game against Baldwin-Woodville, 4-2. The Blizzard finish their season with an 11-13 record (including playoffs). They had started the season 1-6. Bracket
The easy way for me to write about the Grantsburg/Luck boys game tonight would be to copy and paste the post from the first game they played, change some of the names (Jason Jensen to Brennan Olson) and the final score and I could go to bed!
I won’t do that, though.
If you care to listen to the game you can find the archive here.
This game was so highly anticipated and hyped up that it seemed that there could be no way those 10 guys on the court could live up to it.
Wrong!
Over 1000 people witnessed another gut-wrenchingly exciting game which came down to a buzzer-beating shot to win the game by one. This time it was Luck who came away with the victory 57-56 in Grantsburg. Taking that shot was who you might suspect… Brennan Olson (he’s a stud… and I say that in the most manly way possible).
Olson got off to a very slow start, in fact he didn’t score until a few minutes into the second quarter (it was a dunk where he had to knife through 3 people to get to the rim then he threw it down with two hands). He finished the first half with only four points. It looked like Grantsburg had figured him out after he went for 25 in their first meeting, but they hadn’t; Olson ended up with 22.
The boys in purple came out blazing hot hitting jumpers from everywhere, Ben Larson especially, it seemed nobody clad in purple and white could miss. Grantsburg used that sharpshooting to amass a 14 point lead at one point in the third quarter, but conservative play and cold shooting in the fourth quarter spelled doom for the Pirates.
This game also crowned Luck as the winners of the West Lakeland conference. Had Grantsburg not inexplicably lost to the Webster Tigers a couple weeks ago, there would be a two way tie for the conference crown, instead the Cardinals get it outright.
Really, there’s not a lot more to say about this game. If you were not one of the 1000+ people in attendance, you really missed out. The crowd was electric the entire night as probably 900 people witnessed the girls game (which Grantsburg won!) which started at 6:00. There was even overflow seating in the auditorium starting during the girls game. It was an incredible experience.
Casting our gaze towards the playoffs, both of these teams are projected to receive number one seeds. You can read my previous post about the bad draw that Luck is getting (and the great draw Grantsburg will be getting) if you follow this link. Brackets will be finalized on Sunday and I’ll post the as soon as I can.
The Pirates could clash with the Cardinals one more time this year if both teams win their regional. They will meet in Somerset for the Sectional semifinal. I can predict the name of my post after that game, "An epic, part III" The only uncertain thing is the victor. Here’s hoping for just one more game between these two rivals.
Most of the people in the gym for the girls game were there to establish their seating for the boys game. They couldn’t have imagined that the girls game would also be a great one to witness.
The Grantsburg gals had one up their short sleeves as they put together their best performance of the year by dispatching of the Luck Cardinal ladies tonight. The final score escapes me at the moment (why did I throw all those stats away?!?) edit: the final score was 39-34
The game was tied at halftime at 16-16 (why I can remember that and not the final score is beyond me). Then Grantsburg took control after halftime.
Kortney Morrin was not her normal scoring self tonight (she was great defensively again, though), but Haley Larson and Sarah Wald picked her up, both scoring in double digits and giving Grantsburg their second win of the season on their last regular season game. This win puts them in a sixth place tie with Unity in the West Lakeland and moves them to 2-16 on the season. A disappointing season even with the win, but putting that together for the last game must make coach Lisa Mckinley and assistant coach Kelly Olson very proud.
Grantsburg will now face a tough test to open the playoffs travelling to Prescott (14-5, 8-5 in the Middle Border). Prescott finished in fourth place in the Middle Border which is made up of many division 2 schools.
Here is a link to find the broadcast of the live streaming games (Luck @ Grantsburg, girls: 6:00, boys:7:30).
If, for some reason the link isn’t working, you can go to the event page by finding the YouCastr widget to the right and clicking on the link that will take you to the game.
Grantsburg will again have strong baseball and softball teams this spring.
The girls fastpitch team finished last year ranked 6th in Division three and will be bringing back a lot of key players a year removed from getting to the sectional final game.
The boys baseball team is already getting some recognition from Wisconsin Baseball Coaches Association. The Pirates check in at number nine in the 2009 preview. Here is the breakdown:
