FIELD TWP- When the 6-19 North Woods girls basketball team took to the home court last Thursday for their regular season finale against the Class AAA Hermantown Hawks and their 15-8 record, the outcome was a foregone conclusion. The Grizzlies didn’t have the height or skills the Hawks possessed, and Hermantown had built its record with wins over AAAA, AAA, and AA schools. The only question was how the Grizzlies would handle themselves against overwhelming odds.
And the answer was with a whole lot of grit, drive, and pride. The Grizzlies held the powerful Hermantown offense in check in the opening minutes, as a Tatum Barto interception and fast break bucket at the 14:39 mark had the Grizzlies trailing 4-2. A double by Sierra Schuster and a triple by Barto kept North Woods close at 11-7. But the Grizzlies went cold as the Hawks found their rhythm and built a 29-7 lead over the next four minutes. Addison Burckhardt broke the Grizzlies’ drought with a deuce, but down by 20, the handwriting was already on the wall. At halftime the Grizzlies trailed 53-19.
In the second half, the Grizzles never let up on their hustle, and as the Hermantown reserves saw more and more time on the floor North Woods had better success defensively, holding the Hawks to less than half of their first-half output. The Grizzlies continued to struggle with finding the basket, shooting just 18 percent for the game. The longer Hawks presented a challenge to the Grizzlies’ passing game, as North Woods turned the ball over 32 times. Still, North Woods kept up the fight until the final buzzer in the 77-37 loss.
Barto led the Grizzlies with 14 points, and Brynn Chosa dropped in three three-pointers on the way to a 12-point night.
Grizzlies Head Coach Liz Cheney was upbeat about her team’s performance.
“I was proud,” she said. “We talked about coming out and playing hard and just seeing what happens, and we’ll make adjustments. When you’re playing against girls that are two and three heads taller than you, we have to change the way we pass, we have to rethink the way we shoot. I thought we came out pretty good, and I thought, ‘Wow, we’re going to have a little bit of a game here. I thought we did some really nice things on offense. Then we had a timeout when we were down 13, and then all of a sudden we were down 20 and it just escalated from there.”
The Grizzlies drew a road contest against Chisholm for their opening round game of the Section 7A tournament on Thursday, but Cheney didn’t know who they would be playing when she talked optimistically about the Grizzlies’ chances.
“Whoever it is, we can be competitive with them,” Cheney said. “If we can lock in and set our minds to it, do some very specific practicing for that game, who knows? We like to talk about the NCAA, where a 12 seed knocks off a five sometimes. Maybe this will be our year. We’re peaking at the right time, we’re coming together, so we’ll see.”