alexandriacardinals

A belated posting due to technical difficulties . . .

March 6

[It’s going to be a beautiful day for a symphony!!]

[Hmmmm, going to the symphony.  Which suit to wear?]

[Turned out to be the longest concert CLSO has ever performed (to the best of limited knowledge) at two hours, but also before the biggest crowd ever (again, I’m guessing, but the 1,000+ seat high school auditorium appeared to be about 80 per cent full).]

[Yes, the first week of March, Danny was wearing a tee shirt, temperature in the low 60’s, no snow apparent on the premises.]

[The players take the field and begin warm-ups.]

[The chorale joined in a couple times from the risers on the right side.]

[The kids first ever symphony – well, I believe they prefer music from the movies to Bach. They gave the event a two thumbs up!  (Displaying extraordinary manual dexterity with an over-the-head, backwards selfie!)]

[Symphony board president Greg Donahue welcomes the audience, thanks the sponsors, and requests search parties be formed to find more strings!  Though a little light in the violin and cello area, they still put out a great sound, and when they started the theme for Star Wars the patron in front of me (who shall remain nameless for the sake for anonymity) nearly jumped out of her seat.  Thanks again to the symphony for another terrific performance.  We look forward to all the future concerts!]

Preliminary to the symphony

March 4

[Components at SAWA, with the Super running up to put “bread in my jar” during Piano Man.  The next night The Cheese Bots (again with sax man Marty Sarlett) were at SAWA.]

Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for forty-five minutes. ~  Aaron Copland

Up next:  ?

Hey, it’s now March 5th, we’re in the section semi-finals tonight against Little Falls so I’d better get this quarter final game report published . . .

March 2

 

[LET THE TOURNAMENT BEGIN . . . Introducing Emma Ziegler (1)]

[Kendall Kohler (3)]

[Macy Hatlestad (11)]

[Emma Schmidt (25)]

[Kayla Feldhake (43)]

[OK, I think I dropped my contact lens right about here . . . ]

[Does anyone see it yet?]

[It’s puce.]

[Yeah, I know puce is out now . . . ]

[We were hosting the Bemidji Lumberjacks in a first round game.  The Lumberjacks must be in a transition phase for as a school quite a bit bigger than Alex, their varsity team had a very short bench in terms of number of players.  Oh, and we beat them by over 30 at their place in our only previous meeting this year.]

[Where’d the ball go?  It was just here a minute ago . . . hey, is that a contact lens?]

[The ref shadows Macy up the court.]

[Schmidty, at the point of the defense, gets a steal and goes in for a lay-up.]

[And then hustles back on defense again.]

[Ooops, did someone get behind us?]

[The tone of the game . . . when the Lumberjacks inbounded, the Cards applied an immediate double team which often led to a turnover and an easy score.]

[Or a foul sending a Card to the free throw line . . . in this case Kendall.]

[Macy drives . . . ]

[At the half, a lot of points came late when our pressure was wearing them down.]

[2nd half . . . ]

[Zig, Macy, and Kayla play a 3-person keep away.]

[Macy is a great free throw shooter.  But on this night, I think she missed a couple.  And she was 0 for 7 on 3’s, also very un-Macy like.  But it was team wide, as we were only 6 for 26 from the 3-point line.  I hope they come out of this shooting slump soon – maybe with the concentration required against stiffer competition.  The good thing was they kept taking them (you have to when you’re wide open) hoping to shoot themselves out of it.]

[We were a one section further south on this night – allowing this close-up of Macy.  When the students sit in front of us the center section, they stand during the game restricting the sight lines of already sight-line restricted old folks!  They were all dressed in plaid flannel shirts for this game because   . . . we were playing the Lumberjacks!]

[Kendall hounding the dribbler, a 5’9″freshman  guard (45) with the fantastic name of Rumer Flatness who I believe put up 18 points with a shotput-like shot that seldom missed?]

[Kelby Olson-Rodel (13) put on another fine display of her verticality (yeah, she gets good ground clearance.]

[And Kayla once again held down the fort in the middle.]

[Another stalwart defensive performance – the starters all left the game with more than half of the 2nd half left which allowed the Lumberjacks to close what was once around a 30-point gap.]

They shot the ball well early. What comes out of the microwave hot doesn’t always stay hot. I know, because I eat bagels in the morning.  ~ Shaquille O’Neal

Kudos to the boys’s basketball team, who on the next night played No. 1-seeded Fergus Falls for the section championship.  The Cards led by 10 with 3 minutes left in the game . . . but lost 63-60.  A confluence of bad omens struck us at the end.  Spencer Hocket is probably our best free throw shooter but missed two late in the game, Jaran Roste played little of the last 8 minutes because of foul trouble and did foul out, and the free throw numbers did not match up well – we were 4 of 7 for the game, the Otters a perfect 18 for 18. All credit to Fergus, who had a great year.  And our Cards really improved by the end of the year and could have won this game.

Up next:  Depends on wins?

February 27

A Cautionary Tale:  We’ve never lived in St. Cloud, go there only occasionally – yes, we have seen games at all the major venues there, but – so we don’t automatically know our way around.  For this game at Halenbeck Hall on the St. Cloud State campus, we Google mapped it.  Secure in the knowledge we could find our way with this map, off we went.  After battling the horrors of Division Street, we found our exit street to the campus.  A couple of turns and we were at the exact address Google maps had given us for this large basketball arena.  However, the building at that address was . . . a regular house . . . in a regular residential neighborhood?  Well, still we knew the campus was nearby, found it, and asked some students on the street where the basketball arena was.  “Dunno, we’re not enrolled yet.”  We stumbled upon a campus map, found we were about a half mile away, and eventually made it in time to photograph the Herb Brooks Center (Halenbeck is just on the other side).  BTW, it was over 60 degrees on the day, in late February, there were baseball games being played on fields along the way???  Why do professional pitchers and catchers have to report to Florida?

[Remembering where we are in the sections now . . . ]

[The first game was No. 1-seed Fergus Falls v. No. 4 Detroit Lakes.  Fergus won easily.]

[For the 2nd time in 11 days we were playing the Sauk Rapids-Rice Storm – they beat us by 3 at our place then, and the Storm fans around us were pretty confident of a win this time.]

[Our girls’ team and assorted students were there for support.]

[And the introductions . . . ]

[Jaran Roste (1)]

[Matt Bloom (3)]

[Spencer Hockert (15)]

[Braydon Amundson (23)]

[Alec Wensman (25)]

[And the jump.  The Storm center is a 6’6″ sophomore, and the kid can play.  The Storm has good height and talent, so the Cards came out from the beginning determined to make a better effort than they did in the last game.  By the time we were through, I thought it was the best game I’d seen a Cardinal team play in several years.]

[Matt and Jaran bring it up court – I thought we’d been pretty lackadaisical on the offensive end for a while, so it was great to see we were going to play a little more up tempo.]

[Jaran usually plays an assist first game, but this time he took charge of scoring early to make sure we got off to a good start.  With his size and speed as a guard, he’s a difficult player to defend.]

[When driving the lane for layups, he can draw an “and one.”]

[Kendall approves so far.]

[At 6’2″, here he tries to maneuver between No. 31, a 6’3″ good athlete (see last game report) and No. 21, the 6’6″ center.]

[Maybe a Jaran drive and dish led to this free throw by Alec.]

[And here he comes again . . . ]

[The scoreboard at this point shows the scoring triumvirate of Jaran, Spencer, and Alec leading the way.]

[Let’s run out the half.]

[Spencer brings the whole offensive package – he hits free throws, can drive, shoot pull ups, and hit 3’s – and somehow plays bigger than his listed 6′ height.]

[It really didn’t make any difference as to who tried to guard Jaran – he continued to control the game.]

[Things were looking great the half.]

[In the 2nd half the Storm got more aggressive with their defense . . . and did make a couple of runs.  They definitely have the athletes to create turnovers.]

[But every time they made a little run . . . ]

[We attacked right back and either scored and/or got to the free throw line.  As the point guard, Matt hardly ever looks for his own shot – in this game he did on several occasions. And a few “and ones” by Alec fueled our counter attacks.  Had to laugh one time as the usually mild-mannered Alec let out a roar when he scored and was fouled – kind of gave you an idea of how “into” this game the team was.]

[It takes a good defensive effort to hold the Storm to 59.  We got good support in that regard from Jake Drew (33), Robert Anderson (35), and Jeremiah Burnham (5); and Jared Lind (11) provided a long range shooting option.]

[And who knew Amy Jost took her roller coaster ride on the road?]

[Thus inspired, the student section then uses some sort of prestidigitation to assist Cardinal free throw shooters down the stretch.]

[Spencer generally does not need such assistance.]

[Whew, that was a tough one . . . ]

[Celebrate!  We never let the Storm make a game of it (but because you knew they could, we never hit a fan comfort zone until late in the game.]

[So now we play the No. 1-seeded Otters at Moorhead State on Thursday for the right to represent section 8AAA in the state tournament.  The seeds have held serve so far . . . let’s hope we can change that.  It will take another game like the one just played.]

If you make every game a life and death proposition, you’re going to have problems. For one thing, you’ll be dead a lot.  ~  Dean Smith

Up next:  Dunno?

February 26

Alexandria Cardinals – 52, Willmar Cardinals – 43

OK, we were admittedly conference champs before the game even started.  We could do no worse than a tie for the championship when we beat Tech on Monday . . . and later learned Willmar lost on Monday so they had no chance for the title even if they beat us.

And it was senior night.  We had one, Kalley Blade.  Kalley never had the opportunity to get much playing time, but she really seemed to be appreciated by her teammates as someone who contributes in ways other than just game days.  Losing just one senior, of course, means pretty much the whole team is back next year.  We have more juniors than Brach’s has jelly beans – even the JV has juniors.  Where are all these players going to be next year, when you also try to make room for a new corps of JVers?  Likely a situation the coaching staff really doesn’t mind?

[The JV game . . . we pulled it out at the end.  Here’s a player I’m sure the coaching staff is keeping a sharp eye on.  Kaye Paschka (51) is a freshman who we hope hasn’t had her growth spurt yet – because she always appears to be the fastest player on the court.]

[Maggie Slagle (15), Elise Stockmoe (41) (and her sister Lauren (33) featured in some following photos), Courtney Gould (53), all juniors and all good players caught in the varsity numbers game.]

[“The Voice” moved to the top, for back support?  Where’s Evie?]

[Sophomore Taylor Partington (45)]

[Wrapping up a very good season for the JV.]

[The varsity game, a tribute to senior Kalley Blade, the Amazing Mr. Ripley was there for school photo coverage, and it was BEACH NIGHT for the student fans.]

[Cardinals greet Cardinals at center court.]

[Referee Jon Mulder (local offspring) explains the coin flip to the coaches and team captains.]

[And we’re underway as our Kayla Feldhake (43) gets the tap.]

[I believe that despite her head first slide, Kendall Kohler (3) was called out by the umpire.]

[Probably because the conference title issue had already been resolved, our Cardinals apparently decided to see if we could come back from an early 10 – 2 deficit?]

[Kendall, Kayla (background), Emma Schmidt (25), and Emma Ziegler (1) on defense.]

[Macy Hatlestad (11) inbounds .]

[Although not here (as I recall), a sign that our offense was not totally in gear was that Macy actually missed a couple of free throws!  Say what?]

[Schmidty at the point of the all-court press.]

[Another sign we were a bit out of sync as a team.  Macy was bringing us back all by herself.  At almost halfway through the 1st half, it was Willmar – 12, Macy – 10.]

[Kelby Olson-Rodel (13) brought so much defensive energy to the game, she was in early foul trouble and, as I recalled, fouled out late.]

[Kendall was good . . . but as a team we were only 14 – 23 from the line.  We’ve been doing better than that.]

[Kiyana Miller (21) hit a nice mid-range jumper.  I’d like to see her take more of those – otherwise our offense revolves around 3’s and layups.]

[Their center is 6’4″, and obviously impossible to stop when she gets the ball in low. We did have a mobility advantage in the post.]

[The defenses were good on both sides which made offensive play raggedy.]

[Then at the start of the 2nd half our Cardinals put on a display that makes them really run to watch.  No more Mr. Nice Guy.  We went into a full bore, in your face, triple team defensive pressure that created multiple Willmar turnovers.  I’m sure Willmar was counting to make sure we only had 5 players on the court.  Our scores off turnovers projected us into a comfortable double digit lead we held for the rest of the game.  Here Zig and Macy lead the offense.]

[Mmmmm, could that be Kim Kardashian?]

[Schmidy and Kayla battle for a rebound.]

[Oh no, is it going in?]

[We interrupt this basketball game to bring your regular scheduled programming (during basketball games).  Once again, hockey goalie Amy Jost leads the student section on a roller coaster ride.  It was obviously beach night (we expect most of our snow to be gone this weekend as the winter than never was (so far!) continues) – nobody told the senior fans.  Hey, I have Hawaiian shirts!  Anyway, the Amazing Mr. Ripley covered the action from the other side, undoubtedly for various school publications.]

[Yeah, since it was at the beach, it was a longer ride than usual!]

[Macy and Kelby shepherd it up.]

[Shift change?]

[Kiyana at the line again – a good sign that she’s being aggressive offensively.]

[Boom, dynamite?]

[Schmidty led off the 2nd half with her defense at the point.]

[And Zig at the line.]

[A solid win spurred, as usual, by great defense.  It appears we will be the No. 1 seed for sections.]

[After years of idle speculation (OK, entirely in this blog), the truth finally comes out.]

I never thought I’d lead the NBA in rebounding, but I got a lot of help from my team-mates – they did a lot of missing.  ~  Moses Malone

Up next:  More roundball