Lady Vikings begin season with loss to Regis, bounce back to beat Baldwin-Woodville

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by Marlys Kruger

Sports Correspondent

The Colfax girls started their 2023-2024 basketball season off a little slow starting with a 53-39 loss at home to the Eau Claire Regis Ramblers November 14. They made a quick turn around, traveling to Baldwin-Woodville two days later and came home with a 43-36 win over the Blackhawks.

Colfax began a four-game home stand last evening when it hosted Division 2 River Falls of the Big Rivers Conference. The Vikings will break for the Thanksgiving holiday and return with two more home out-of-league contests against Bloomer on Thursday, November 30 and Chippewa Falls McDonell on Saturday, December 2. 

Eau Claire Regis

The Ramblers had been a thorn in the side of the Vikings for many years but have been struggling to win a lot of games the past few seasons. They were 12-13 a year ago and finished in the middle of the highly competitive Cloverbelt West Conference. They are led by senior Ashley Chilson who averaged 19.6 points per game last year, 

In a typical first game, both teams had plenty of turnovers, making it a defensive game for most of the first half and moving into the second half.

The Vikings were down 15-10 with four minutes left in the first half but a nice scoring run capped off by a three point shot from Autumn Niggemann  sent the teams into the intermission with the score knotted at 19-19.

 Jada Anderson knocked down a free throw to put the Vikings up 23-22 early in the second half, Jaycey Bowe added her own free toss for a 24-23 advantage and a McKenna Shipman drive made it 26-26 with around 12 minutes to go. After Regis pulled ahead 29-27, Brynn Sikora scored for the Vikings to knot things up again.

After a Sierra Shipman bucket, the Ramblers began to pull away with help from a couple of long range shots to make it 41-31 before Kaysen Goodell canned a pair of free throws and Jeanette Hydukovich scored from the paint to get the Vikings back in it, down 41-35.

Both teams hit the ten foul mark with around six minutes left, resulting in plenty of free throw attempts and the Vikings lost that battle. Down 43-37, the Ramblers began to pull away again, resulting in the 14-point win.

After holding Chilson down in the first half, she ended up hitting her average with 19 points in the game with most of them in the second half. The Vikings, normally a strong free throw shooting team, made just 50 percent of their shots from the charity stripe, making 13-of-26 attempts. Goodell and Niggemann each had one shot from long range for the team. Hydukovich finished the game with 10 points while Goodell added eight and Niggemann and McKenna Shipman tacked on six each.

“Shooting only 50 percent from the foul line and 30 percent from the floor combined with being out-rebounded was not a good combination to start the season,” head coach Courtney Sarauer said. “A positive note was the girls fought until the end and tried to execute anything I wanted to run,” she added.

Baldwin-Woodville

The Vikings didn’t have time to dwell on the Regis loss when they took on the Division 3 Blackhawks who finished 12-13 last season and were third in the Middle Border Conference.

It was once again a low scoring contest early on with McKenna Shipman starting the Colfax scoring with a bucket. Jordyn Bowe canned a triple for a 5-4 lead and McKenna Shipman added another long ball, a short jumper and a drive through the lane for a 12-10 advantage. Goodell knocked down a pair of free tosses and after McKenna Shipman connected from behind the arc on back-to-back shots it was 24-13 with a couple of minutes left in the half. B-W drained a triple at the buzzer to cut the Viking lead to 24-16 at the intermission.

“Meadow (Keltner) and Jordyn knocked down some big 3s in the half to spark us,” coach Sarauer said.

Anderson opened the second half with a bang, drilling a trey and Hydukovich added two free throws to up the lead to 29-16. But after Jordyn Bowe scored on a drive for a 31-23 advantage, the Viking offense went stagnant for a long, long time. The Blackhawks used a full-court press to create some havoc on the Colfax ball handlers and they cut the Colfax lead to 34-28 with just over five minutes to play.

McKenna Shipman hit a pair of free tosses and Brynn Sikora and Goodell both added another to make it 38-30, but the Vikings turned the ball over twice, allowing B-W to close the gap at 38-34 with two minutes left.

Both teams were in the double bonus at this point and the game was finished off at the charity stripe. Goodell went to the line twice and made 2-of-4 shots and McKenna Shipman made the final point on her free throw for the 43-36 win.

“It was great to get in the winning column after dropping our opener on Tuesday,” Sarauer said. “I was impressed with the energy and effort my girls showed. We had a strong defensive effort from Jada, Kaysen, Jeanette and Autumn that helped us secure the win. A lot of our younger players got some valuable minutes in,” she added.

McKenna Shipman, the Viking’s leading scorer last year, scored 18 points which included three triples to lead the Vikings. Hydukovich added six point and Jordyn Bowe and Kaysen Goodell both had five with Goodell’s all coming from the charity stripe. Colfax stayed just under the .500 mark shooting 13-for-27 at the foul line and they drilled six shots from behind the arc for the contest. Maggie Jenson paced the Blackhawks with 15 points.