Making His Point(s): Lance Berend Exited His Final Home Game (a Win Over Alta Aurelia) As The Career Scoring Leader At HMS. During The Game Berends Passed Jon Walburg, Who Had Held The Record With 1584 Points. The School’s New All Time Scorer Has Set The Mark At 1604 Points. Berends Also Finishes As The Hawks’ Career Rebound Leader With 1001 Boards.

Lucas Kroese Slices Through The Alta Aurelia Defense In The Hawks’ Tournament Victory.

The postseason could hardly have begun any better for Hartley-Melvin-Sanborn. The Hawks raced out to a 20-0 lead over Alta-Aurelia on the way to a 74-47 win in a Class 1A District 1 quarterfinal game played February 13 at Hartley.
“I thought our defense in that first quarter was exceptional,” remarked HMS head coach Naet Hoaglund. “We competed really hard and contested everything. I thought Kooper (Ebel) fueled us defensively. He was able to apply some pressure and get some steals that led to run outs on the other end. His effort was outstanding.”
In the second quarter the Warriors took advantage of what Hoaglund called a stagnant Hawk offense to eat into the HMS lead, which was down to 36-26 with a minute and a half left before halftime. The coach was then was able to take pride in how the Hawks finished the half. “We closed out the first half on a 9-0 run, all of those coming in the last minute,” noted Hoaglund. Kooper got a couple of steals that led to scores and then Keevyn (Jacobsma) had a big offensive rebound and put-back to finish out the half.  That was huge for our momentum going into halftime. We go from only being up 10 to being up 19 in what seemed like a blink of an eye and that was really important for us.”
In the second half Hoagland saw his team play consistent defense and move the ball on offense. “We were able to get multiple guys involved in the scoring column which makes us so much harder to defend,” said the coach. “I couldn’t be more proud of the spark that Keevyn gave us with his scoring. He had the hot hand and was able to knock down some big threes for us. Two of his four threes came in the second quarter when Alta-Aurelia was making a run at us. Credit our guys for sharing the basketball and Keevyn for being able to capitalize. I thought Lucas Kroese had a nice game off the bench. He was able to find some windows in their zone and get some timely buckets. And then to have Travis (Kamradt) and Trenton (Vollink) knock down some threes was important.”
Jacobsma finished with 20 points. He was 8-of-12 from the field, hitting four of his six shots from beyond the arc. Kroese contributed six points while Kamradt added five points and Vollink four. Ebel and Lance Berends each shot a high percentage, scoring 22 and 13 points respectively. Ethan Diehm scored a basket and Isaac Schierholz sank both his free throws as each recorded two points.
As a team, the Hawks were at 52 percent shooting with 29 field goals in 56 attempts. They were 7-of-17 from downtown and 9-of-19 at the foul line. Alta-Aurelia went 17-for-52 from the floor for 33 percent. The Warriors made six of 19 treys and seven of nine charity tosses. The turnovers totals showed the Hawks with 10 and Alta-Aurelia with 16.
Vollink located his open teammates to the tune of seven assists. Jacobsma’s three assists accompanied eight rebounds. Ebel also had eight rebounds along with eight steals. Kamradt supplied four boards and two steals. Berends was the rebound leader with nine.
A-A 7 19 10 11 – 47
HMS 27 18 15 14 – 74