ASSUMPTION - Robin Klingler knew her team got beat by a buzz saw opponent in one of the biggest stages a basketball team can reach in the state of Illinois.
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There are many times when the final score falsely portrays the overall story of a game, but last night it was correct.
The St. John’s Redbirds were defeated 51-15 by the West Lincoln-Broadwell Wolverines in the IESA 7th grade girls state championship game at Central A&M Middle School in Assumption on Thursday night. The Redbirds finished their season at 21-2.
West Lincoln-Broadwell, a team, comprised mostly of sixth graders went undefeated at 27-0 and claimed their second straight 7th-grade championship. They’re now on a 52-game winning streak going back a season ago when they went 25-0.
Kloe Froebe scored a game-high 27 points and her teammate Elly Martinez added 16. Incidentally, Froebe scored 19 points in the Wolverines championship win over Pana Sacred Heart a year ago as a fifth grader.
“They’re a very good team. [Froebe] is an excellent player, but she has a supporting cast that was just as good. They started on fire,” St. John’s head coach Robin Klingler said. “At this age, I haven’t seen any team that couldn’t miss. I was afraid of that.”
That’s hardly an exaggerated statement because the Wolverines put on a shooting clinic and showed why they were undefeated. In fact, no team got to within 20 points of them throughout the playoffs.
St. John’s, a Catholic school in Carrollton with an enrollment of fewer than 50 students from 5th-8th grade and the Redbirds entered the game with a 21-1 record. They took down Mulberry Grove 38-9 and Calhoun 38-21 to win their regional, and then Kinderhook Western 40-22 in the sectional. The Redbirds scraped past Hume Shiloh 25-19 and Monmouth ICS 19-17 to earn their way to the championship.
“We had a little bit more of a height advantage than the other two teams that they met in the first round and the semifinals that maybe we could have altered their shots, but I think our girls got a little hesitant when things got blown out right from the start,” Klingler said.
The Wolverines won the opening tip-off, scored on their first possession, and presented the Redbirds with a full-court press that devastated them nearly the whole game, and it started with a turnover. Jenna Bowman sank a mid-range baseline shot, and moments later Klingler called a timeout 80 seconds into the game to straighten things and kill the momentum.
Unfortunately, the momentum would never die for the Wolverines.
Their full-court press sped up St. John’s which forced them into quick and off-balanced shots, while the Wolverines were quick in transition to get to the basket, in particular, Froebe and Martinez. There were a couple of instances where the Redbirds did take advantage of their height by crashing the board's on offense, but the Wolverines did a splendid job of boxing out and allowed hardly any second-chance points that St. John’s were gaming for.
“That’s something we devoted a significant amount of time to the last two days,” Klingler said about West Lincoln-Broadwell’s press. “We didn’t do a good job of doing what we normally do.”
West Lincoln-Broadwell shutout the Redbirds 17-0 in the first quarter and with 3:23 to play in the first half, Kylie Kinser ended the shutout with an and-1, and the score was 30-2.
West Lincoln-Broadwell led 34-2 at halftime.
However, St. John’s, spurred on by a good following of supporters from Carrollton never quit.
Kinser would go on to score 13 of the Redbirds 15 points, including seven in the third quarter. Two of her buckets came off of in-bounds plays under the basket when she towered over two Wolverines both times.
“We saw [West Lincoln-Broadwell] blowout [Piper City Tri-Point and Morton Blessed Sacrament]. You kind of have that hope that it’s not going to be you and when it starts happening to you it’s hard to stop that spiral,” Klinger said.
Perhaps one of the reasons why the Wolverines played at the top of their game was the fact that they’ve been in this situation the last handful of years and know how to win big games consistently. That sounds strikingly familiar with how the Carrollton Hawks perform at the high school level in various sports. However, the team from Carrollton was on the other side of the story last night.
“Even though those are young girls here for the first time, they’ve seen it, and it’s been a long time since we’ve seen it,” Klingler said. “You can’t take anything away from them. They’re a great team.”
The last time a boys or girls team from St. John’s made it to the state tournament was in 2003 when the Redbirds beat undefeated Martinsville 33-27 to claim the 8th grade girls state championship.
The Redbirds have a decent amount of seventh graders who will be eighth graders next year, which says they’ll reload and be ready for another challenge and hopefully another state run. On the same token, the players can savor the fact that they were apart of one of the most excellent seasons ever accomplished in St. John’s basketball history.
