Both the Martin and Wayland girls’ varsity basketball teams will play in the regional finals Wednesday evening.
Wayland pulled away from a 12-1 Plainwell squad in the second half and registered a 54-41 triumph. The Lady Wildcats, now 11-2 on the season overall, will play Division 2 regional tourney host Edwardsburg (11-3), which pulled off a surprisingly dominating 67-47 upset over previously unbeaten Buchanan. The Wildcats and Eddies will meet at 7 p.m.
Meanwhile, the late-surging Martin girls got the best of Walkerville, 58-43, defeating the squad that beat the Lady Clippers for the state championship in 1987.
“After an uninspired first half, we started clicking in the last 12 minutes of the game,” said coach Ben Schipper. “There was a 10 minute stretch where we scored about 28 points.
“Our coaching staff felt like we came out lacking energy, just trying to kind of feel out Walkerville rather than be in attack mode from the start. We finally got a little more fire in us in the second half and started playing Martin basketball. Bri Warner moved into the post for us and made some great high-low passes into Natalie (Yowler), who scored all of her 8 points in the second half.”Warner finished with 12 points. Gracie Shettler scored 23 on the night, 11 of the Lady Clippers’ 26 for the first half. Cirsten Coburn knocked in a couple timely threes and finished the game with 9 points.
“We got to watch a great game before ours (Colon vs St Joseph MI Lutheran) and look forward to the challenge of playing a senior-laden Colon team.” the coach commented. “This will be a rematch of last year’s regional semifinal game in which we beat Colon 40-23 before the season was cancelled (by Covid).”
The victory was the fifth in a row for Martin, which will face a 16-4 Colon team at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Mendon in Division 4.