The boys put away Fairmont 10-0. The girls' story was a 6-3 win over Fairmont.
The boys needed some time to summon momentum. The first period ended with MBA having crept in front 1-0. But the second period was all Storm. Six goals got added to the total. Suspense gone. We added three goals for good measure in the third. Our first period goal was by Tucker Blume at :36, assist from Kaleb Breuer.
Bring on the second period and its rally! It began with Zach Wrobleski getting the puck in the net at 1:47, assist from Charlie Goff. MBA went up 3-0 when Blume did the job unassisted at 2:35, shorthanded style. The score became 4-0 as Braeden Mattheisen got the puck in the net at 4:50, assist from Caden Olsen. Goff struck unassisted at 10:39. Then it was Wrobleski's turn to do the unassisted thing at 13:40.
Our last goal of the period was power play-style, scored by Logan Hadfield with assists by Jackson Gades and Breuer (16:59).
Eyes returned to the Lee Center ice for period No. 3. Bryce Lehman got assists from Alex Claussen and Blume as he scored at 8:13. Alex Carlson got our ninth goal with help from assist-producers Hadfield and Kye Suess (10:10). Lehman finished the scoring work at 12:40 with the assist from Olsen. Our goalie was Nate Bratton who had saves on all 12 of his attempts. The Fairmont goalie was Carson Johnson.
Girls: Storm 6, Fairmont 3
Quite the dominating force on the ice for the MBA girls cause. Karlie Bruns played with a real flourish. Bruns scored all six of our goals in the win over Fairmont. She's a senior forward. She came out of this flurry of success with 33 goals on the season, seven assists.
Bruns and her mates took charge in the first period as they fashioned a 4-1 lead. Fairmont managed to shut us down in the second period before we came back to score two more goals in the third. MBA achieved its sixth win with the 6-3 winning score.
Bruns began her barrage with assists from Sadie Koehler and Gabby Schneider (1:51 of the first). Then she did the job unassisted to put us up 2-0 (7:22). Fairmont got on the board with a goal by Isabella Laarson with an assist from Maia Goerndt (9:44). Bruns scored twice more in this period, first with a goal that had assists from Charli Erdahl and Elizabeth Day (10:43). Then at the 16:26 mark, Bruns sent the puck in the net assisted by Molly Jones.
Fairmont had the only second period goal. It was by Larson with an assist by Karissa Newville (0:37).
Fairmont struck first in the third period as Goerndt and Larson showed good chemistry, Goerndt with the goal, Larson with the assist (2:33 power play). Then Bruns struck again for the home team, unassisted-style at 7:01. Bruns worked her magic again at 8:46, unassisted, to wrap up the scoring. Quite the memorable day for Morris Benson Area.
Our goalie was Ava Breuer with 21 saves in 24 attempts. The Fairmont goalie was Llana Moeller.
I remember how many years we waited before the bleachers got pulled out on both sides of the gym for girls basketball games at Morris Area High School. The Tigers played at the 1968 gym. Memories of the '68 gym as the varsity gym fade ever more. You should know that the '68 gym was touted as the cat's pajamas when it opened in the late 1960s.
As with many new things, the novelty fades over time. We saw this in the macro picture with Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington: seeming like a miracle at the beginning, a rusted-out relic at the end of its run.
Our '68 gym was a true focus in our community for so long. I attended countless games there, thought that the drum section of the pep band got too loud sometimes! And I also clearly remember how, year after year, girls got second class treatment by playing in front of just one section of bleachers. The other section stayed compressed against the wall.
For a time we could surmise that fan interest sort of justified this. Girls sports didn't hit its stride until maybe the mid-1980s. Oh, it could have happened earlier but the MAHS girls teams did not distinguish themselves. I was taken aback at how detached and disinterested our community and even the school staff was, in the face of a lack of competitiveness and intensity. I saw it as hugely ironic because our Mary Holmberg was definitely a strong advocate for equality for girls sports. But for whatever reasons we languished a lot.
Hence, no strong need to accommodate large fan turnouts. You know, it really was a shame.
Things didn't really change until the fall of 1987 for volleyball. I was stunned to see for the first time, an MAHS girls team in volleyball or basketball being truly competitive, being taken seriously on those terms. We were not out of the doldrums permanently. Some sputtering still lay ahead.
Today, even though the won-lost is not always impressive, I think we can describe our girls teams in the high-profile sports as mostly competitive, certainly worthy of being taken seriously on competitive terms. Don't remind me of how there are still games like what our girls played vs. 'Waska and BOLD. On the whole, I think the teams are holding their own.
Keep in mind that I can remember too many years when we were not like that at all. Worse yet, if I tried sounding some alarm bells around town about this, the reaction was mostly enmity against yours truly. Occasionally I'd run into someone who knew exactly what was going on and our talk would be guarded as with a whisper. You know what small town life is like. But at times I could not help myself. Looking back I am not ashamed.
So yes we had a girls advocate in MAHS athletics, Ms. Holmberg. So you'd think she and the administration would be eager to have the bleachers pulled out on both sides of the gym. But so much time passed before it happened. As for the loud drums, I'm not sure anything was ever done about that! I'm only partly kidding on this.
Why am I thinking about the bleacher thing today? It's because a friend recently gave me the heads-up about how UMM is doing this with men's basketball games now! Wow! It used to be a given that all the bleachers were available. My tipster friend asked, what would Perry Ford say? Ford was a coach and quite the promoter for the men's program. He and I really "clicked." Sadly he has passed on. He would have a very hard time living with the low competitive level of UMM sports today.
Note the curtain covering up the withdrawn section of bleachers at the UMM basketball gymnasium. (UMM sports website image)
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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