Indians end season with 15-11 record
By Greg Seubert
The state tournament run is over for the Weyauwega-Fremont girls’ basketball team.
Algoma handed the Indians a 51-40 loss March 3 in a WIAA Division 4 sectional semifinal at Green Bay Preble.
W-F, a No. 7 seed in its tournament bracket, ended its season at 15-11, while the top-seeded Wolves improved to 23-2 and will host another No. 1 seed, 22-3 Marathon, at 7 p.m. Saturday, March 5, in a sectional final at Waupaca High School. The winner of that game will advance to state, set for Thursday to Saturday, March 10-12, at the Resch Center in Green Bay.
It didn’t look good early for the Indians, as the Wolves scored the game’s first 12 points before Kiley Akey put W-F on the board with a three-pointer five minutes into the game.
The Wolves eventually built a 16-point lead and took a 30-17 lead into the locker room at halftime.
“What was going to be important was the first five minutes of the game and the first five minutes of the second half,” coach Joe Titus said. “We dug ourselves a little bit of a hole, but there’s no quit in these kids. We gave it everything we could. I’d like to think we gave them everything they could handle.”
The Wolves kept their double-digit lead for most of the second half until Caragan Volz’s three-point play with 1:16 to play cut the deficit to 48-40.
However, those turned out to be the final points for the Indians, as the Wolves hit three free throws down the stretch.
Volz and Karissa Akey led the Indians with 11 points each, while Kiley Akey added nine. Anna Dier and Baleigh Delorit had 16 and 15, respectively, for Algoma.
The game turned out to be the finale for six seniors: Karissa Akey, Alyssa Goode, Volz, Hailey Krause, Rachel Knorr and Raelyn Schalkowski.
“There’s nothing I can say about these seniors that is going to give them the credit that they deserve,” Titus said. “Everything they’ve done – it doesn’t matter what kind of minutes they played – each one of them was a big part of what we did.
“It’s going to be a group that’s going to be impossible to replace,” he added. “It’s not just what they did on the court that’s going to be remembered, it’s going to be what kind of kids they are.”