1999 Girls 2nd in State
33-2
(State Rank- #2)
The 1998 Streaks had lost to Loyola 59-43 in the State Elite 8. The reality was that the game was not as close as the score appeared- the Streaks were dominated. Loyola went onto win their second straight State Championship. The Ramblers returned 4 of 5 starters for 1999. They had three All-State players, who were all headed off to D1 scholarships- Laura Sobieszczyk (5’8” Loyola), Olga Gvozdenovic (6’2” Duke), and Elizabeth Fletcher (6’2” UW-Milwaukee).
When we met with the varsity in the Spring of 1998, it was a most unusual meeting, we were meeting with the same team from the year before. Everyone was back. Coach Peachey had a background in physiology, and he developed our strength program. The message to our girls, “You are not going to get taller, you better get stronger.” No girls basketball team before them or after them has ever been as committed to weight room as they were committed. They were women on a mission.
While many of them played a Spring sport, they came in and lifted. Only one player was involved in a Fall sport, so they lifted and played all Summer and all Fall. Indeed, they got stronger.
We had felt that we got a “bad draw” in 1998 to play Loyola in the Elite 8. We were anxious to see what the draw would be for the ‘99 State Tourney. Coach Peachey was the first to see that our draw was potentially again going to be Loyola. When he came over to tell me, our response was, “Oh, crap.” When we shared the news with the team, none of them seemed to have the same atttitude we had as coaches.
The Super-Sectional game was on Monday. The week before, we tried to set up tapes for either Loyola or Lake Zurich. We had them lined up. When we won in the Super, it was arranged for Tuesday morning to have Steve Bryant drive to the Chicago area and get 3-4 game tapes. He had tapes back to me by about 10am.
The school district allowed me to take a professional day on the Tuesday after the Super-Sectional. There was a phone press conference with the IHSA in the morning, and then it was just watching tape. In the morning, I had a long conversation with Derril Kipp of Maine West. Maine West had lost in OT to Loyola in the Sectional. He pushed the idea of playing a “triangle and two” vs Loyola, and explained how they had run it.
I started watching game tape. Coach Jaskoski came over to my house to watch tape with me. We were hesitant to play a triangle and two because we had not played anything but man to man all year. Our conversation kept coming back to,”Well, what do we do when Loyola does this?” It really was Jas’ suggestion that instead of triangle and two, why not try playing a box and one. Eventually we settled on a 1-3 zone with a chaser.
We always set up practice to be after supper at Knox on the Tuesday after the Super-Sectional. The Athletic Director put together a “media session” of sorts in the cafeteria with newspaper and radio people. We wanted to be on the college court since Redbird was a college court. The logic of going after supper was to give coaches more planning time. We practiced Tuesday and Wednesday, then headed to Normal on Thursday for a walk thru at Redbird Arena.
Thursday evening, the IHSA had a banquet. The design was such that they put one player from each team at different tables. Our players left the banquet feeling disrespected by Loyola. A number of the Loyola players either did not know they were playing Galesburg or when asked by someone at the table, pretended not to know they were playing us. Our girls left the banquet having a chip on their shoulder.
We had the first evening game on Friday night. Maybe Loyola players did not who they were playing, but when they took the floor, they found out the team had a lot of fans. And since Loyola was two time defending champs and we were downstate Cinderella team- 90% of the 5,000+ fans were for Galesburg from start to finish.
Obviously the Loyola game was going to be a stressful game. Coach Peachey had long before started a tradition where before the game, he took the team into the shower area and sang,”Nothing But Hound Dog.” He had no idea why he ever picked that song but it seemed to work to relax the girls and in a silly way establish a sense of this is the same old thing.
Sarah Larson hit a layup with 2 seconds left in the first quarter to give the Streaks a 12-11 lead. Things did not go as well in the second quarter as Loyola scored the first 12 points of the quarter to go up 24-11. The Streaks played even the rest of the quarter to go in at half down 34-24. The only positive was that both Gvozdenovic and Sobieszczyk both had picked up two fouls. Larson had 8 points and Sarah Pacheco 7, while Sobieszczyk had 14 points. She was the player that we were manning.
With three minutes to go in the 3rd q, the Streaks had battled back to down 36-31, and Gvozdenovic, Fletcher, and Sobieszczyk all had committed 3 fouls. The third quarter ended with the Streaks down 42-36, so there was a sense that we were back in the game.
Loyola led the entire fourth quarter until Sarah Larson hit a free throw with 3:57 to go that knotted it at 49-49. With 1:48 to go, Jaque Howard hit a three to finally give Galesburg the lead- 54-52. With 1:16 Sarah Larson fouled Olga Gvozdenovic, Olga made both free throws to knot the game at 54-54.
Galesburg got the ball with 1:16 to go and a tie game. We elected to go for one shot. We went into our triangle delay that featured Larson, Megan Pacheco, and Jaque Howard. With a mixture of posts and guards on defense vs. these three, it was tough for them to switch. We got in trouble with 33 seconds left and took a time out. Once it was inbounded again, we delayed again.
With 12 seconds to go, we broke off the delay and set up our flex play that we called “Help.” It was designed to pass to Zolper at one elbow. Megan Pacheco would make a flex cut off Larson’s screen. The plan was for Larson to then get a skip and go one on one.
Instead as Pacheco cut off the screen, Zolper hit her in the middle of the lane for a 12 foot turn around jumper. Pacheco missed it long, where several Loyola players scrambled for it. Zolper ran from the opposite elbow and just tipped the ball back before it went out of bounds. It went right to Larson, who picked it up and banked it in at the buzzer.
That set off a wild scramble with our bench flooding the floor. Shanell Jackson started giving the IHSA’s Mr. Attitude a big hug. Coaches from other schools said that they and their teams were in the upper deck and the upper deck exploded with hundreds of people screaming and hugging like we were their team.
After the commitment the girls had made to the weight room in the off-season, when all finally got to the locker room, the only thing I asked, “Well, was all the time in the weight room worthwhile.” That was the end of talking- the locker room was a mad house.
An issue in the past when we were at State was that if we won the first round, it was so hard to get a scout on the semi-final opponent. To help with this issue, I had arranged with Coach Mike Cooper of Ottawa to be our scout at State. He met with us at the hotel and went over info on Lincoln our semi-final opponent.
After two close games vs Harlem and Loyola, it is no surprise that the Lincoln game turned into the same thing. In a low scoring game, Lincoln led 9-7 after one quarter. In the second, Sarah Larson and Megan Pacheco scored all 15 of our points as we took a 22-18 lead.
In the third quarter, Galesburg went out to a six point lead but Lincoln roared back to tie the game after three at 35-35. The game was close the entire fourth quarter with it either tied or Galesburg up by 1-2 points.
With just about the same finish as the night before, Lincoln tied the game at 39-39 with 1:01 to play. It was a basket by Steph Reichle, who had 24 of their 39 points. Galesburg delayed for one shot. Again, we ran “Help,” this time Zolper skipped it to Larson. Sarah made her famous shot fake and drove baseline. Rather than letting her shoot a layup, Lincoln fouled her. With five seconds left, Larson hit both FT’s to give the Streaks a 41-39 win. It was our third close game in a row.
We were matched up vs. Chicago Marshall in the championship game. We got down 20-13 after one quarter, but knotted it up 24-24 in the second quarter. We trailed 35-30 at half. Marshall stretched out their lead in the second quarter and led by 10 early in the fourth quarter.
Sarah Larson hit back to back shots to cut the lead to 56-51 with 3:39 to go. Then Zolper hit two ft’s to again cut the lead to 5 points with 2:41 to go. Galesburg did not score again until 21 seconds to go when Sarah Larson hit a three. Marshall finished the game off 68-56.
Marshall was a very good team, and if we had a 2-3 practices to prepare maybe we would have done better but it is no guarantee. But it also was a classic example of the challenge of playing three games in two days. Marshall played on Friday at 1:45pm, and Saturday at 11:15. Galesburg played at 6:30pm on Friday, and 12:45pm on Saturday. So to win the State title, Galesburg would have needed to have won three games in 24 hour period. On Saturday, Marshall was back to their hotel by 1:30p, while Galesburg returned to their hotel at 3:30pm. Pointing this out is not intended to say that is the reason we did not win, but for us to beat a team like this, we needed a little more rest. It was not the first time in the history of Galesburg boys or girls basketball that the Streaks had the late games going into the State title.
Four years before as we left the floor after the third place game at State, I overheard our two freshman talking to each other. Jenny Zolper turned to Sarah Larson and said,”We’re coming back here every year.” I later told Peachey that she didn’t get how hard it was to get to State. It turns out that I didn’t get it, she knew what she was talking about. All four years in HS, Jenny and Sarah played the last game of the season at Redbird Arena.
The 1995, 1996, 1997, and 1998 teams made the Galesburg community aware and interested in girls basketball. The 1999 team took the community’s interest to a new level. Before 1999, there were many games where they needed to open up both balconies for our home games. 1999 was the first season where both balconies had to be opened every single home game. Exciting times!!
Galesburg Regional
Galesburg 77 Geneseo 44
Geneseo Sectional
Galesburg 88. Freeport 53
Galesburg 76. Rock Island 62
NIU DeKalb Super-Sectional
Galesburg 65. Machesney Park Harlem 64 OT
State at Redbird
Galesburg 56. Loyola 54
Galesburg 41. Lincoln 39
Chicago Marshall 68. Galesburg 56
Roster- Jaque Howard, Michelle Flaar, Megan Pacheco, Whitney Snyder, Sarah Larson, Jenny Zolper, Rachel Bicego, Sarah Pacheco, Kimi Peck, Shannon Williams, Katie McGunnigal, Mary Lindstrom, Stacy Boettcher, Shanell Jackson, Michelle Mundy, Ashley Shepherd
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