On Saturday, March 11th the 2016-2017 girls basketball teams have swept the floor this season with the Varsity team becoming number 2 in the state for the Western AA conference before the AA State Championship in Great Falls starting the 9th of March. The Lady Bengals became state champions for the first time in twenty years.

The girls went into the state tourney with high spirits and confidence radiating from their faces. They faced their first opponent, Billings Senior, and sent the Broncs into the consolation bracket after a score of 37-29 and moved onto the next game facing the number one seat Bozeman.

The Lady Hawks proved to be tough opponents, but the Bengals came out victorious. Jamie Pickens, a sophomore at Helena High played great under pressure and with seconds left drained two free throws to make the score 44-42, for another Bengal win.

The monumental game was not only incredible due to the intense amount of hard work that the whole team put in, but also because most of the seniors have been playing together since elementary school.

Jamie Pickens said, “The [teammates] make the ride a hundred times better. The journey with them since middle school has been an experience I’ll never forget.”

With five seniors on the team, winning state means a lot more than bragging rights.

Sami Holman, a senior, stated, “I look forward to telling my future family about this day, in hopes it will motivate them to be the best they can be and that their hard work will pay off.”

Taelyr Krantz, a senior, stated that “We have come so far from winning the Helena Swish Tournament to the State Championship together, it is indescribable. There is nothing else that compares.”

All the girls agreed that their coaches had a lot of impact on how they had their eyes set on state from the beginning.

Krantz stated, “Everyday in practice, [our] coach[es] would countdown the number of days until the state tournaments, then everyday until we were state champs. It kept us motivated all year.”

The Lady Bengals dominated State. Their win is well deserved;  through their hard work and perseverance, they brought back the State title after a hiatus of 20 years.