Athens abruptly ends regional run

WIAA DIV. 5 REGIONAL FINAL

Rib Lake’s girls basketball regional run ended in Saturday’s WIAA Division 5 final with the team’s third loss of the season to the Athens Blue Jays.

The regional’s number-one seed handily beat the Lady Redmen twice in the regular season and Saturday’s result was the same as the Jays’ pressure defense and strong inside presence produced a dominant 66-38 win.

Rib Lake, the regional’s third seed, finished 5-12 after starting post-season play with two wins. Athens improved to 10-9 and drew the third seed in this weekend’s Division 5 sectional bracket. The Blue Jays are at second-seeded Suring for a sectional semifinal tonight, Thursday, while top-seeded Three Lakes hosts fourth-seeded Gresham in the other semifinal.

A Lauren Pelnis score gave Rib Lake a quick 2-0 lead, but that was the only time the Redmen held a lead. Elizabeth Van Rixel put Athens in front with a 3-pointer and Addison Lavicka got two steals with one resulting in her free throw and another giving Van Rixel a basket.

Rebekah Strobach sank a 3-point shot to pull Rib Lake within 6-5, then the Redmen went cold offensively and season- long troubles with turnovers resurfaced at a bad time, allowing Athens to quickly put the game out of reach.

The Jays scored 12 straight points to build an 18-5 lead before Pelnis rebounded a short jumper by a teammate and put it in. Rib Lake didn’t connect from the field until Pelnis found Kamy Annala with a long pass on a press break to make it 36-12. A free throw by Lavicka and an offensive stickback from Jazelle Hartwig gave Athens its largest lead of the half at 39-12 before the Jays settled for a 42-18 halftime lead.

The lead hit 30 at 50-20 less than four minutes into the second half and Athens was able to put things into cruise control from there as it earned the school’s first regional title in the sport since 2015.

Pelnis ended a strong regional week with 15 points. In three post-season Athens

games, she averaged 17.7 points per game. Annala scored seven and Danielle Mann, who had 15 points in Rib Lake’s regional semifinal win at Prentice Friday, was held to four second-half free throws.

Josie Scheithauer, Molly Heiser, Tiara Kestler and Emily Rodmann added second two points. Strobach finished with three and Jolee Gehrke added a first-half free throw.

Van Rixel led four Blue Jays in double figures with 17 points, 11 of which came in the first half. Lavicka scored 14, Sophia Coker scored 11 of her 12 points in the first half and Hartwig scored eight of her 11 in the opening half.

On the positive side for the Redmen, they held forward McKennzie Schug, who had scored 37 points against them inside in the two regular-season meetings, to just two points in Saturday’s meeting.

Rib Lake will lose just two seniors to graduation. Nellie Hopkins, who missed the tournament run due to injury, was, along with Pelnis, a top scorer for the team this year as well as a top rebounder and the team leader in steals. Gehrke logged a lot of minutes as well.

The rest of the crew looks to be back hoping to build off its strong tournament run and, hopefully, an off-season filled with more opportunities than last year to play and improve.