The house was packed, and emotions were high as Iola High’s girls hosted Osawatomie Friday.
The crowd was on hand for a couple of reasons. First, of course, was to root on the young IHS squad, which features nary a senior, but nine freshman learning the ropes of varsity basketball.
The second was to honor Iola’s 2006 girls state champion squad, as the entire team was inducted into the Don Bain Hall of Fame.
“I told the girls, we have to win,” chuckled Iola head coach Emily Sigg — who’s also one of the aforementioned state champion honorees. “Otherwise, I’m not going to be able to enjoy this.”
She needn’t have worried.
Iola controlled things from the start, scoring the game’s first nine points, and leading 18-4 by the end of the first quarter.
Osawatomie took advantage of some Mustang foul trouble in the second quarter, closing the gap to 10 by halftime.
But Iola reasserted its dominance with a 19-2 third quarter run, forcing a running clock down the stretch in a 47-20 romp.
The win lifts Iola to 3-7, and showed on a night in which the community celebrated the team’s past, that the future is starting to look pretty bright, too.
“I’m so proud of the girls,” Sigg said. “We had a game plan, and they really stuck to it.”
The plan was to be aggressive at both ends, and to be unselfish with the ball — “we before me” — Sigg explained.
Juniors Brooklyn Holloway and Zoie Hesse were the early protagonists, scoring nine and seven, respectively, in Iola’s dominant first quarter.
But Hesse picked up her second and third fouls seconds apart early in the second quarter, sending her to the bench for the rest of the half.
Osawatomie promptly scored seven straight points to slice what had been a 16-point lead to 20-11.
“It was frustrating, because they were stupid fouls,” Hesse said. “In the past, we’d let stuff like that get stuck in our heads.”
But Mustang freshman Haidyn Desmarteau — who also had been sidelined with a pair of early fouls — ended the skid with a bucket and free throw to give the Mustangs a 23-13 lead at the break.
