Missouri splits it’s Championship Basketball across two weekends to accommodate the 80 games played by 40 teams across 5 classes. So I was back and Mizzou Arena, and even Hearnes Center, to shoot some more High School State Basketball. This week I was stringing for the St. Joseph News-Press covering the Class 1 Jefferson girls and Class 3 Maryville girls. Didn’t get a whole lot out of Maryville, who pretty much shot exclusively from the perimeter, and lost their first game and won the 3rd place game.
Jefferson was a different story. They made it to the Championship game, probably with a few bruises too-Class 1 girls play rough. But they couldn’t win out so I got the whole range of emotion from just one team. It was fun and even a little gut wrenching. In all the dejection photos I’ve taken, I don’t think I’ve ever had a harder time editing them. Partially because I had so much from just one girl, who was a freshman no less (there wasn’t even one senior on the team), and because I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so torn up about it.

I covered two teams for two different papers last weekend for the Missouri State High School Basketball Tournament. It was a lot of work, especially since both teams made it to the championships and the championship games were back to back. But I was able to get both ends of the spectrum since Notre Dame lost thier game, but Kearney won.