HERMANTOWN — It wasn’t the performance the Ely girls had hoped for in the school’s first ever trip to a sectional finals game, but one player in particular, Lydia Shultz, showed that there’s no quit in this Wolves’ basketball team.
The matchup last Thursday against the state’s No. 1 team in Class A, Mt. Iron-Buhl, was a daunting one. The seventh-seeded Wolves weren’t even supposed to be there, but they earned their way in with big upset wins over No. 2 Deer River and No. 3 Chisholm.
Having lost to the Rangers by 43 in February, 78-35, Ely Head Coach Tomi Cole hoped for a more competitive matchup the second time around.
But the Rangers had other things in mind. With the precision offense and stifling defense that earned them the state’s top ranking, MIB squashed any thought that this game could be close by steamrolling to a 33-4 lead midway through the first half. Zoe Mackenzie finally broke a long scoring drought for the Wolves with a three, but by that time the only thing the Wolves had left to play for was pride, and that they did.
They scored ten more points before the half, a demonstration of grit in the face of impossible odds that fed Shultz’s second half performance.
Trailing 54-17, the Ely junior created shots wherever she could get them against the Rangers’ stout defense, with screens and assists from her teammates as she carried the Wolves’ offense with an electric performance that netted 22 of her 24 total points in the second half. Shultz scored all but four of the Wolves’ second period points in the 87-43 loss.
“MIB is No.1 in the state for a reason - they have depth, tempo, and they really make you pay for mistakes,” Cole said. “They have exceptional postseason experience and they know what it takes to win at this level. They jumped on us quickly and we just never settled in and recovered. Lydia had an outstanding second half and gave us a little spark when we needed it.”
With a 1-4 start to the season and a No. 7 seed in the tourney, one might be inclined to label the Wolves as a team of overachievers, but they’re more rightly described as a team that learned to live up to its potential.
“Despite the loss, I am incredibly proud of this group,” Cole said. “We were truly up and down at times, but they played with such grit and determination when it mattered most. We knew going into postseason play that we had a challenging but promising path forward to the section final if we played our best basketball, and I applaud our group for showing up to play and achieving that. Of course, the outcome wasn’t what we would have hoped, but to be the first in program history to make it to a final is such an achievement and I can’t express my gratitude for this group and how hard they worked to get there.”
The Wolves ended the season with a record of 16-10.