SEDALIA DEMOCRAT
Applewood Christian wins national championship in Springfield
By JOHN HANSEN
MARCH 25, 2012
The Applewood Christian School girls basketball team went from the brink of non-existence in November all the way to a national championship on Saturday. The Lady Mustangs (26-5) played with a seven-player roster — only five of whom were high school age — throughout the season, and capped the campaign with a 48-42 win over the Northwest Arkansas Hornets, of Paragould, at Missouri State University in Springfield.
Sixth-year head coach Thom Crosier said the Lady Mustangs’ short numbers — and the fact that they were playing their third game in three days and fifth in six days — almost cost them the inaugural Varsity Small School Division National Championship at the Christian Homeschool tournament.
“On Thursday, Friday and Saturday, the team essentially played with five players, and that’s almost what cost us,” said Crosier, whose second-seeded squad beat out 21 other teams for the title. “Because by late in the fourth quarter on Saturday, the team we played had pressed us and we got worn out. And we just plain gutted it out later in the game. But the kids are fairly well-conditioned, they ran hard throughout most of the year, and they pulled it off.”
The entire Lady Mustang starting lineup made the all-tournament team. Tournament MVP, sophomore point guard Miranda Crosier — one of three of Thom’s daughters on the team — had a team-high 19 points in the final. Sophomore Meredith Crosier chipped in 18, including eight in the final frame, and pulled down a club-best 14 boards. Other starters were junior Katie Rieckhoff, sophomore Emalea Rieckhoff and senior Savannah Crosier.
Next year, Applewood will start the season in the same boat: Wondering if it can field a team. With only six returning players, the coach hopes a couple more will come out of the woodwork.
“Honestly, it’s a little bit overwhelming,” Thom Crosier said of the national title, the first for a program that dates back only eight or 10 years. “One, it’s not something we expected to participate in, and two, we didn’t expect that we were going to do this well, especially since we started the season with a low number of players.”
Applewood also took third place in a regional tournament this month in Des Moines, Iowa, where it lost to a much-larger KC Metro team in the semifinals. The Lady Mustangs went 7-1 in the postseason.
For a school of only 85 students in grades K through 12, where the parents field all of the athletics costs, just figuring out the logistics of traveling to a tournament is half the battle.
“In other years, we decided not to go because of the tournament being too far away,” Thom Crosier said. “When it moved to Springfield three years ago, we were contemplating trying to make arrangements, but for various reasons — having to take a full week off from work, hotel costs, travel costs — it becomes prohibitive. This year, because they added the small-school division, we made an effort to go because we knew we could be competitive. We got tremendous parental support, and we worked out all the issues with the school.”
The Lady Mustangs drove round-trip to Springfield daily, except for one night. After winning the semifinal on Friday over the Wichita (Kan.) Defenders, they stayed at a hotel and then played in the title game at 12:30 p.m. Saturday.
Applewood opened the game with a 9-0 run and led 11-6 by the end of the first frame. The Lady Mustangs put up another 11 points in the second quarter while limiting the Hornets to three points with a 3-2 zone defense to lead 22-9 at the half.
Northwest Arkansas turned up the pressure in the second half, using a full-court man-to-man press to wear down the Lady Mustangs. Turning turnovers into points, the Hornets tallied 16 points in the third quarter, but Applewood nearly kept pace with 15 of its own, including eight from Miranda Crosier. The Lady Mustangs led 37-25 heading into the final frame.
The Hornets continued the full-court press and hit three treys in the fourth quarter, matching their total from the first three frames. Northwest Arkansas drew within six points with 30 seconds left, but Applewood ran out the clock.
For Applewood to field a full roster, it needs nearly half of its female students in grades nine through 12 to play on the team (the roster can also be supplemented by students in lower grades and home-schooled students).
That’s why, despite the thrill of the national championship, Thom Crosier said: “Hopefully we’ll have a team next year.”