Red Arrows Celebrate Basketball Championship
Justin Scott - Sports Reporter
3/14/2024
The longer the wait, the sweeter the reward. It’s been a long journey for the Lowell Girls Basketball team the last four years. Led by a trio of future college players, Lowell defeated East Grand Rapids 57-31 last Friday in the district championship game held at LHS.
The last three seasons Lowell has been in a district with Rockford, often pitting two ranked teams against eachother. This has been a problem two-fold. One, Rockford has double Lowell’s enrollment. Pretty well documented, but worth repeating. Any time you match up with a school twice your size it won’t be easy. Two, Rockford is a girls basketball state power, culminating in a state championship last year. Lowell has had a program ranked in the last three years, the caliber to be a district champion, but three straight district finals to the Rams left Lowell as runner-ups three straight years.
This year, Lowell avoided the second-ranked Rams, playing and defeating Middleville Thornapple Kellogg 55-20 in the semifinals, advancing to play East Grand Rapids at home in the finals, where they pulled off the win.
“It feels great to finally get to hold that trophy after four years. We've worked so hard this year and the last three for this exact moment. Every year we had the goal to win districts and now we finally made that happen and it's an amazing feeling,” said senior Braxcynn Baker, committed to play basketball at Murray State next year.
Despite the 57-31 scoreline, the game’s result wasn’t foreshadowed by this season’s results nor assumed by anybody in the crowd. EGR has a solid basketball program and split with Lowell this year in OK Conference play.
The Pioneers opted to shadow Baker the entire game, doing whatever they could to stymy the future Murray State Racer. Double-teaming Baker and teammate Piper Risdon, daring Lowell's other shooters to score. For them to be the ones to beat them. In the early going, they did. It started with a three from R.J. Wagamon. Allyson Munson converted a putback for the next basket. Gracyn Hamilton would add an early three. Lowell led 12-8 after the first quarter. Seven of EGR''s eight points came from down low, from sophomore forward Sienna Gills.
In the second quarter, Lowell started to open up the lead. The problem for East Grand Rapids was as they covered Baker closely, that means contact and fouls, and Baker being one of the leading free throw shooters in the state, she was glad to accumulate those free throws throughout the course of the game.
Lowell started the second quarter on a 10-0 run capped off by a Taryn Jackson three-pointer. EGR closed the half with a buzzerbeater two, but still trailed 28-13. Lowell's interior of Risdon and Munson helped Lowell dominate the glass, making second chances tough to come by for the Pioneers.
“The feeling of finally winning a district title after putting in so many hours of hard work into the sport we all love is indescribable. The past four years we have fought through lots of adversity in order to get where we are but in the end it paid off and was worth every second. Finally accomplishing this goal that we set for ourselves our freshman year is very fulfilling, but now we have more to continue to chase after,” senior Piper Risdon said, also a division one commit, attending Vermont next fall.
Hosting the district final has its advantages. Lowell's student section and crowd was into the game from the start, the loudness of the crowd heard through the WRWW radio coverage provided by Connor Rapson and Tray Coulier.
The lead stretched to 25 by the end of the third quarter and Lowell was well on their way to a win. Late in the fourth, the right-handed Baker had two rare free throw misses. She only missed because she put them up with her left hand, noticed smartly by the radio call. Those two lefty free throws were her only free throw misses of the night. Up 27, with less than a minute to go about to win your first district championship, you can have a little fun.
A lot more fun was about to be had though and as the clock hit zero, the Red Arrow players and crowd were able to celebrate their first district championship since 2011. Lowell moved on to the regional semifinals, held this Monday at Hudsonville. Regional results will appear in next week's paper.
