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By TODD FERTIG
TopSports.news
Few people know what it feels like to win a state basketball championship. The rush, the exhilaration, the exhaustion and relief, the bond with teammates and the bittersweet end of the journey … few have actually had that experience.
When Jenny Schmidtlein watched from the crowd Saturday as her daughter Hailey received a gold medal on the Hutchinson Sports Arena floor, she had a pretty good idea what her daughter was feeling.
Hailey Schmidtlein scored 24 points in Saturday's 57-52 Hayden win over Bishop Miege in the Class 4A state championship game, joining her mom as a state basketball champion. [Photo by Rex Wolf/TSN]
Jenny (Hubbell) Schmidtlein (No. 11) was a member of Hayden's 2004 Class 4A state championship team and is the mother of current Wildcat sophomore standout Hailey Schmidtlein. [KSHSAA Gallery of Champions]
The 2003-2004 Wildcats defeated Wichita Collegiate 45-37 at the Bicentennial Center in Salina to claim the Class 4A title after beating Labette County and Colby in the first and second rounds of the tournament. Wearing No. 11, Jenny Hubbell (now Schmidtlein) was a member of that team.
Having won three Class 4A titles in the 1990s, the 2004 Wildcats probably had no idea it would take 22 years to bring home another crown. The long wait finally ended Saturday when the Wildcats knocked off perennial power Bishop Miege.
Did Hailey know that her mom was on the last team to win a title for Hayden?
“Oh yeah,” the sophomore said with a laugh. “I’ve been getting a lot of texts about it already.”
As if they were clairvoyant, the first thing both mother and daughter said in separate interviews was they look forward to seeing the 2026 team memorialized in the Hayden gymnasium.
“I told Hailey the minute she was a freshman, I said, ‘You’re gonna be the next person on that sign at Hayden,' ” Jenny said after Saturday’s game. “I’m very excited that she will be the next person underneath mine.”
“It’s really cool knowing that my state title is going to go right next to my mom’s,” Hailey said.
Winning is a tradition at Hayden, and it’s a family tradition for the Schmidtleins. Hailey’s father, Scott, was member of the 2004 Hayden football team that won the 4A title.
“With both my parents being part of (the tradition) at Hayden, I’ve been raised with it,” Hailey said. “I’ve been taught to always play with heart no matter how the game is going, and I think that’s been a big part of it is that’s how her team played.”
The younger Schmidtlein led the most recent version of the Wildcats to a 19-6 regular season record, averaging 17.5 points, 7.5 points and four steals per game. Her stats took a dip in the playoffs, but she was at her best in the championship game on Saturday. She scored 24 points, grabbed 11 rebounds, and recorded three assists and four blocked shots.
Hayden coach Carvel Reynoldson saw it coming.
“I’m going to take credit for it because I told her before the semifinal game, I said, ‘You’re going to go off today.’ And when that game was over, I said, ‘I was off by one game. It’s happening.’ ” Reynoldson said.
Reynoldson said Schmidtlein impacted the championship game as much with her defense as she did with her offense.
She was one of several Wildcats – including senior Ella Foster and junior Alana Mitchell – who guarded Murray State commit Mary Grant, a dynamic Bishop Miege guard who lit the Wildcats up for 27 points a year ago.
Hailey was also sent into the lane to try to contain the Stags’ powerful post, Jayla McClinton, who is headed to play at Southern Illinois University.
“When you’ve got a girl like Hailey, she can guard their best player and not just guard her but make her really uncomfortable,” Reynoldson said of Schmidtlein’s work against Grant. “It doesn’t surprise me. She’s awesome. It’s not just her talent. It’s not her athleticism. It’s just the person she is. She’s so humble and does all the right things all the time. She’s a great example.”
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By RICK PETERSON
TopSports.news
Washburn junior Jack Bachelor drives for a basket in Saturday's 64-62 NCAA Central Regional loss to Minnesota-Duluth. [Photo by Rick Peterson/TSN] 
Senior Bryson Smith led Washburn with 15 points in Saturday's 64-62 NCAA Central Regional loss to Minnesota-Duluth. [Photo by Rick Peterson/TSN] 
Sophomore Tyson Ruud (2) scored 12 points for Washburn in Saturday's 64-62 NCAA Central Regional loss to Minnesota-Duluth. [Photo by Rick Peterson/TSN] - Details
By TODD FERTIG
TopSports.news
HUTCHINSON -- By defeating Osage City 60-44 on Saturday in Hutchinson, the Silver Lake girls won their second title in three seasons and the eighth in school history.
Silver Lake senior star Kailyn Hanni celebrates at the end of Saturday's 60-44 win over Osage City in the Class 3A championship game. [Photo by Rex Wolf/TSN]
The Eagles built a 26-14 lead at the half, which they expanded to 40-29 after three periods.
But the Indians staged a comeback that saw the Silver Lake lead sliced to just five points, 55-50, with six minutes remaining. The Eagles defended, hit free throws and capitalized on a couple of runouts to shut down the Osage City rally.
After hitting just 8-15 from the line for three periods, Silver Lake was a perfect 10-10 in the fourth.
“In the postseason, you know you’re (facing) a good team,” Silver Lake coach Kyle Porter said. “They’re gonna make runs. We knew that they were going to get going. We knew we were gonna take a punch and we just needed to respond and play the next play.”
Porter’s star player, a senior who hardly ever makes mistakes, made one final blunder. As the final seconds ran off the clock Kailyn Hanni fired the ball high into the air and ran to embrace her teammates. The only problem was, the ball came down out of bounds with a second remaining.
“I got scared. I just threw the ball up. I didn’t know what I was doing,” Hanni laughed.
Silver Lake senior Kailyn Hanni holds the Class 3A championship Saturday in Hutchinson. [Photo by Rex Wolf/TSN]
She could afford to laugh. The Fort Hays State recruit scored 21 points, hit 11-13 from the line, collected nine rebounds, dished out seven assists and drew 11 fouls on Osage City defenders.
“I said, 'You had one more second and then you could have done that,' ” Porter said of Hanni. “She’s the most complete player that I’ve ever coached. Not just what she does with the ball and her command of the entire floor, but her ability to pass, her ability to score.”
Porter said Hanni demonstrated her leadership traits when she took command of the situation when Silver Lake fell behind 7-0 to Holcomb in the semifinal contest.
“When you have a player do that, it’s one thing for a coach to do it, but when you have a player that calms everybody down, she’s just an incredible leader, and incredible kid,” Porter said. “We’re gonna miss her next year, but we’re excited for what she has in store.”
In Hanni’s four years of varsity action at Silver Lake the Eagles finished fourth her freshman year, took first her sophomore year, and lost in the state final to Halstead by three points last year. She admitted that the pain of losing outweighs the thrill of winning.
“Last year, we felt it a lot worse, and so from that day on, we were grinding until this day,” Hanni said.
“Each state championship in its own is a special journey, a special ride,” said Porter, who won a state title at Royal Valley before coming to Silver Lake six years ago. “With this one, what made it so awesome is the fact of how close we came last year and we didn’t finish the job.
"That left a sour taste in our players’ mouths. And I knew looking in the eyes of our team tonight in the fourth quarter – we were going to get (Osage City’s) best shot in the fourth quarter – I could tell that we were gonna respond and finish the game.”
Sophomore Karys Deiter scored 19 points in Silver Lake's 60-44 win over Osage City Saturday in Hutchinson. [Photo by Rex Wolf/TSN]
Silver Lake junior Savanah Wende scored 10 points in Saturday's 60-44 win over Osage City. [Photo by Rex Wolf/TNS]
Hanni scored just four points in the first half as Osage City focused on corralling her. Silver Lake sophomore Karys Deiter stepped up with 11 first-half points. Junior Savanah Wende also produced big baskets. Deiter and Wende finished with 19 and 10 points respectively.
“Karys has played a lot of basketball in her life and that experience, along with Kailyn, that pays dividends in a game like this,” Porter said. “She stepped up in a big way. We needed to have complimentary scoring tonight. It couldn’t just be Kailyn and Savanah (Wende). It’s got to be everybody, and it was really nice to see Karys step up.”
“I was really happy to see Savanah and Karys really come out on top in that first half. And then my coach was like ‘Ok, time to turn it on.’ And I was like ‘Ok, let’s go.’ ” Hanni said.
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By TODD FERTIG
TopSports.news
HUTCHINSON -- The Hayden girls took home the school’s first basketball state championship since 2004 by downing perennial power Bishop Miege 57-52 Saturday at the Hutchinson Sports Arena.
Hayden senior Ella Foster celebrates with coach Carvel Reynoldson and her teammates after Saturday's 57-52 win over Miege in the Class 4A state championship game. [Photo by Rex Wolf/TSN]
The Class 4A title game offered Hayden a chance to avenge its 59-52 semifinal loss to Bishop Miege a year ago, when the Wildcats settled for third place.
Hayden exploded out of the gate with a run that put the Stags in scramble mode the rest of the game.
Sophomore Blakely Walter set the tone by burying a 3-pointer on the game’s opening possession. Sophomore Hailey Schmidtlein then hit a couple of shots as the momentum began to grow.
When senior Ella Foster hit a three at the 3:51 mark, Hayden had a 10-0 lead on the stunned Stags.
The Wildcats threw every defense in coach Carvel Reynoldson’s book at the Stags, face-guarding star Mary Grant on the perimeter and using various bodies to combat Bishop Miege’s size advantage in the paint.
“We came out and really kind of suffocated them,” Reynoldson said. “I don’t know if they were ready for us to press them or not, but we pressed them and they looked really timid. And Kadence Watts early on, she had some fundamentally perfect blockouts on (the Stags’ 6-foot-1 post Jayla McClinton) that just set the tone for us.”
Hayden led 14-2 at the end of the brilliant first period. The Wildcats padded the lead by outscoring the Stags 15-12 in the second quarter to sit on what looked like a commanding 29-14 halftime lead.
Bishop Miege, winners of 25 state titles, responded like champions. They hit Hayden with a 10-2 run out of the break, cutting the lead to seven.
But the Wildcats regrouped and outscored the Stags 9-3 over the final three minutes of the quarter, a run punctuated by a Schmidtlein’s driving floater at the buzzer to put Hayden up 43-29. For their efforts, the Stags shaved just one point off the Wildcat lead in the period.
“That was everything,” Reynoldson said. “We told the girls in the locker room that Bishop Miege was going to make runs, but we didn’t want it to be that quick or that big. So, the fact that we answered it was really probably the difference in the game.”
Hayden senior Lauren Borjon celebrates a big shot in Saturday's 57-52 Hayden win over Bishop Miege. [Photo by Rex Wolf/TSN]
Even after Hayden senior Lauren Borjon opened the fourth period with a 3-pointer to put Hayden up by 17 points, the Wildcats knew Bishop Miege would not go quietly. The Stags gradually whittled the deficit, then mounted a 10-1 run that shaved the Hayden lead to 55-52 with 52 seconds remaining.
Hayden came up with some white-knuckle stops at the defensive end and Schmidtlein made a driving basket with eight seconds remaining to seal the win.
“Generally speaking, we took care of the ball,” Reynoldson said of the fourth period. “We did have some turnovers, but we also kept attacking their press. We had some layups that were really big down the stretch. Continuing to be aggressive on offense, even though we wanted to run clock, that turned out to be a big, big difference.”
Bishop Miege star Grant, a Murray State University signee, tallied 19 points Saturday, but did so on 7-19 shooting. She was limited to just two 3-pointers. That was a big enough improvement over last year, when Grant torched the Wildcats for five 3-pointers and 27 total points in the semifinal game.
Sophomore Hailey Schmidtlein registered a double-double with 24 points and 11 rebounds in Saturday's 57-52 Hayden win over Bishop Miege. [Photo by Rex Wolf/TSN]
Schmidtlein stuffed the stat sheet with 24 points, 11 rebounds, three assists and four blocked shots. She took turns guarding Grant on the perimeter, as well as defending McClinton, who finished with 20 points, 13 of which came in the Stags’ fourth-quarter push.
“What was so great was that we had so many defenses that we could use, we wanted to keep switching them,” Reynoldson said. “And it’s so much easier when you have a lead.”
“Grant is an incredible player. We knew we wouldn’t be able to shut her down, but wanted to slow her down as much as we could,” Schmidtlein said. “I think that was a big part of that game, being able to have multiple people on her and getting people breaks. One person can’t guard her the whole game. Having people rotating was a huge part of that.
“I think knowing that I had great help defense was one of the reasons why I could pressure (Grant) so much and fluster her. Because I could get up knowing I had people behind me telling me they got help. If she did go past me, I had someone stepping right up to take her next.”
Schmidtlein noted that the Wildcats and Stags are quite familiar with each other.
“Beating Miege is pretty special,” the sophomore said. “We lost to them in soccer in the state championship last year, and they’ve done really good in volleyball, too. We know they’re always going to be there, so we might as well step up and come out and play confident.”
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By JUSTIN BURKHARDT
TopSports.news
WICHITA -- The Shawnee Heights Lady T-Birds took the court against No. 1 seed Andover early Saturday morning in the Class 5A girls third-place game, marking the final game of Heights' coach Bob Wells’ long career.
After falling to Hays 66-41 in the semifinal, Heights looked to turn the page and finish the season with a win and a third-place trophy, but the Trojans didn't let that happen, taking control down the stretch for a 71-55 win.
Shawnee Heights junior KK Emmot scored 27 points in Saturday's 71-55 loss to Andover in the Class 5A third-place game. [Photo by Selena Rivas Favela/Special to TSN]
For three quarters, the T-Birds showed the fight that had defined their season -- rebounding, hustling and scoring their way into a tight contest.
Heights led at halftime and trailed by just one point heading into the fourth quarter.
Shawnee Heights got the game off to a strong start when senior Reianna Vega scored the game’s first basket. Andover answered quickly, but the T-Birds kept pace.
T-Bird junior guard KK Emmot had a big first quarter, scoring her eighth point before knocking down a three pointer at the buzzer to cut Heights' deficit to 15-13 at the end of the opening period.
Andover struck first in the second quarter, but Heights responded.
Senior Imani McGlory attacked the rim, drew a foul, and knocked down both free throws to tie the game at 20.
Junior Sami Baum followed with a basket to give Heights the lead, and Vega added a three to push the T-Birds ahead, 25-20.
Andover’s Bella Bouddhara stopped the run with a basket, but Baum answered with a three at the buzzer, sending Shawnee Heights into halftime with a 31-23 lead.
The Trojans came out firing in the third quarter, opening with back-to-back 3-pointers to tie the game at 31 and forcing Heights to call a timeout.
Emmot responded out of the break, driving to the rim for an and-one to put Heights back in front 34-31. Andover continued to battle back.
Grier Hand scored inside and, after a turnover, Bouddhara knocked down a three to give the Trojans the lead.
Emmot answered with another three to make it 41-39. Bouddhara then split a pair of free throws, and Emmot followed by hitting two of her own to cut the deficit to one.
McGlory later drove to the basket for a three-point play, tying the game at 44 and keeping the T-Birds within striking distance.
Emmot added two more free throws with 23 seconds left in the quarter to give Heights a 48-47 lead.
But Bouddhara answered again, hitting a shot to send Andover into the fourth quarter with a 49-48 advantage.
The final quarter belonged to Bouddhara and the Trojans.
Bouddhara scored 14 of her game-high 32 points in the fourth as Andover pulled away.
The Trojans outscored Shawnee Heights 22-7 in the period and forced 11 T-Bird turnovers to secure the 71-55 victory.
Despite the loss, Heights received a standout performance from Emmot, who scored a team-high 27 points and was perfect from the free-throw line, going 15 for 15.
As a team, Shawnee Heights shot an impressive 25 of 28 from the line, good for 89 percent.
“I told the girls all season long I never ever questioned their effort, and that's something I'm really, really proud of,” Wells said. “They play their hardest, and they give their best effort. They did the things that we asked them to do. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t.”
