St. Francis seeks perfection along with third title

HUMPHREY - During the past four years, the Humphrey St. Francis girls basketball team has established itself as the team to beat in Class D-1.

On their road to four straight state tournament qualifications, three (and counting) appearances in the state semifinals and two state championships, the Flyers have always entered the final weekend saddled with at least one loss.

Not this year.

St. Francis is just three wins away from finishing with its first perfect season in school history and becoming the 12th girls team to win three straight state championships.

The Flyers start their quest for the three-peat Thursday at 1 p.m. against Palmer (10-12) at Lincoln East.

“We wanted to be district champions, and we wanted to have an undefeated record,” St. Francis senior Traci Sueper said. “It's was one of our goals. So it's really important to us.”

Working against St. Francis's goal of perfection was its difficult schedule, filled with bigger schools and perennial powers. This year, the Flyers played five games against teams with winning percentages of .750 or better. It also played four games against Class C-1 teams and faced eight C-2 opponents.

This year, the Flyers own victories against state qualifiers West Point Central Catholic and Bancroft-Rosalie. St. Francis also defeated Howells and Clearwater, who ended the regular season rated.

“We play a lot of Class C-1 and C-2 schools, so we know it isn't always possible to go undefeated with a perfect record,” senior Kendra Bender said.

Each of the previous two seasons, St. Francis suffered losses during the first three weeks of the schedule and eliminated the possibility of a undefeated season early. This year, the Flyers find themselves dealing with the extra stress of seeking perfection at the end of the year.

“You could feel the pressure build as the season went on, but it is something else to motivate us,” St. Francis coach Bryan Reichmuth said. “These girls are the best competitors, and they Continued from Page 1B

St. Francis' last loss came Dec. 3, 2005, against Class C-1 Wahoo Neumann. Since then, the Flyers have run off 47 straight victories, which is tied for the 12th-best all-time.

In fact, St. Francis has only lost to one Class D-1 opponent in the past three years - Red Cloud in the 2005 district finals. St. Francis' other loss came against West Point Central Catholic, which owns the state's longest winning streak, in 2004.

The secret to the Flyers' success is the variety of defenses they can throw at opponents. St. Francis can effectively play man-to-man, a 1-3-1 zone, a half-court trap and a full-court diamond press against opponents. The scrappy defense feeds into the offense as Bender averages more than five steals per game, and Janelle Kosch adds three.

St. Francis also features a trio of double digit scorers. Bender lead the Flyers with 18.5 points per game. Michele Wieser puts up 12.3 points, while Kosch averages 10.9 points.

Even when St. Francis could have taken a game off, the players refused to do so. Going into the district finals against Bancroft-Rosalie, the Flyers had the wild card locked up, but they wanted to win the district and turn away their postseason rival.

Wieser said they wanted to have the mental advantage should the teams meet again, which would be in the championship game.

“It was very important (to win) because we wanted to go in with the thought that we could beat them,” Wieser said. “We wanted to keep our undefeated season and keep our confidence up. It would be really nice for one year to just have a perfect season.”