A trio of returnees are back to highlight the 21st edition of the Kossuth County Advance Girls’ All-Area Basketball Team this year. Jenna Boelter of Bishop Garrigan makes the team for the fourth time in her career while North Union’s Samantha Hagedorn returns for the third straight season and Aliyah Buscher of Algona is a member of the squad for the second time.

Bishop Garrigan junior T.J. Schnurr was named to the Class 1A second-team all-state squad by a vote of the Iowa Print Sports Writers Association over the weekend in Des Moines.
Schnurr led the 19-5 Golden Bears in scoring with 454 points scored in the 24 games he played in for a scoring average of 18.91 points per outing.
 
​For more on this story, please see the March 15 issue of the Kossuth County Advance
 

A pair of returnees headline the 21st annual edition of the All-Area Boys’ Basketball Team as T.J. Schnurr and Cade Winkel of Bishop Garrigan are back along with newcomers Riley Bauer of North Union, Wyatt Wegener and Trevor Bormann of Algona and Angelo Winkel of Bishop Garrigan.

It was an instant classic. The longest and perhaps the most exciting game of the 2018 state tournament saw No. 6 Cascade outlast No. 10 North Union 62-53 in triple overtime.
The Class 2A semifinal contest took place at the Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines on Friday, March 2. The game saw six lead changes and was dead-locked on six different occasions.

Springville has made an appearance in the Class 1A girls’ basketball title game the past three years and on Wednesday, Feb. 28, it showed the Bishop Garrigan Golden Bears and the rest of the field it intended to make it four in a 54-36 victory over the black-and-gold.
The opening round of the state tournament was played at the Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines. The Golden Bears had tough first half shooting the basketball, making just 4-of-28 shots from the field.

North Union Hallie Reese looked up at the clock and knew she had to get a shot up.  So the Warrior senior launched a heave from just inside the three-point line on the right wing, it banked off the glass and through the net to give the green-black-and-silver a heart-stopping 50-48 win over defending state champion Hull Western Christian.

For the first time since the year 2000, the Bishop Garrigan Golden Bear girls’ basketball team is headed to the Class 1A state basketball tournament.
The black-and-gold, ranked 15th in the final rankings, out-scored No. 5 Kingsley-Pierson 15-9 in overtime to hand last year’s state semifinalist a 73-67 season-ending loss.

The Bishop Garrigan and North Union girls basketball teams have learned their first-round opponents and the times of their games at the Girls State Tournament next week. Garrigan will play top-seeded Springville at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 28, in the Class 1A tournament. North Union will play the game immediately prior to that, at 11:45 a.m. against Panorama. Scroll through the attached brackets to find all of the Girls State Basketball Tournament pairings.
 

Despite a gallant effort, the third time was not the charm for the Algona Bulldog girls’ basketball team as the red-and-black dropped a hard-fought 54-51 contest to the Clear Lake Lions in the Class 3A regional final played at Garner on Saturday, Feb. 17.
It was the third close battle of the year between the two North Central Conference squads as the Lions won back on Dec. 8 at Clear Lake in overtime 44-40 and topped the Bulldogs 47-42 at Algona on Jan. 23.

Carson Devine of Algona finished 1-2 at the Class 2A state wrestling tournament last weekend as the Bulldog junior ended his season with an overall mark of 22-9.
Carson started his tournament off right on Thursday as he won 3-1 decision over Knoxville’s Colby Meyer. He registered a takedown 25 seconds into the match and rode Meyer out the rest of the period.

All year long, Carson Devine has battled some back issues and then got the flu for a week and missed the North Central Conference wrestling tournament.
But the Algona junior put all that in the past by winning a pair of matches to take the district title at 170 pounds and advance to the Class 2A state wrestling tournament this week in Des Moines.

In a league that featured four rated teams all year long, the North Union Warrior girls’ basketball clinched first place and a conference championship with a 72-25 Top of Iowa Conference victory over the Garner-Hayfield-Ventura Cardinals in a game played at Armstrong on Friday, Feb. 2.

A big second quarter which Algona out-scored Iowa Falls-Alden 22-6, proved to be the difference as the red-and-black defeated the Cadets 58-37 in a North Central Conference girls’ basketball contest played in Algona on Friday, Feb. 2.
 
For more on this story, please see the Feb. 8 issue of Kossuth County Advance.

After scoring just 37 points in the first 24 minutes of the game, the ninth-ranked (Class 2A) North Union Warrior girls’ basketball team erupted for 33 points in the fourth quarter and 18 more in overtime to rally for an 88-79 win over the Bishop Garrigan Golden Bears.

Rebounding from a lop-sided loss at Garner at Tuesday, the Bishop Garrigan Golden Bear boys’ basketball squad used some hot shooting in both the first and third quarters in an 83-40 Top of Iowa Conference win over the North Union Warriors.