Above: Kaitlynn Linnell tried to put up a shot against Molly Trapp in the Vikings’ game against Esko. At 6 feet tall, Kaitlynn looked small compared to Molly Trapp, and Molly is 5 inches shorter than her sister, Savanna. Right: Showing beautiful shooting form, Theresa Morrin just got her shot off over the outstretched fingers of the Esko player guarding her. The Vikings had a rough night against the Eskimos, losing 74-18.
The Cook County High School girls’ basketball team had the very tall order of playing three very tough basketball teams (Esko, Mountain Iron-Buhl, and Barnum) in one week. Two of the teams are ranked high in their divisions in the state, and the third is ranked first in the conference and might end up with a state berth. Despite giving their best efforts, the girls lost all three games.
Esko overshadows Vikings
No, that wasn’t an eclipse on December 13, just Savanna Trapp’s very large shadow cast over the Vikings when Esko came to town with their top-rated Class 3A team.
At 6’9” (and apparently still growing) Trapp is one of the tallest— if not the tallest—girl basketball player in the country. But Esko has much more than Trapp; they have all the ingredients of a good—if not great—girls’ basketball team and beat the young Vikings 74-18.
The Vikings’ record fell to 3-2.
With the long-limbed 6’9” Trapp (14 points) clogging up the middle on offense and defense and super guards Marisa Shady (18 points) and Claudia Turner (19 points) and a host of starters/ subs coming off of the bench to apply a suffocating full-court press during the first half, Esko raced off to a 44-8 lead at the break.
Still, the Vikings never quit. They played as hard as they could, but in the end Esko was just too deep and too talented for the Vikings to handle.
And while Savanna Trapp sat for much of the second half, they didn’t lose much when they brought in her younger, shorter sister, Molly Trapp, a 6’4” sophomore who in some respects, despite her much shorter stature, plays as well if not better than Savanna.
In fact, Esko coaches showed good sportsmanship when they called off the full court press early in the second half and brought in a bunch of their bench players. However, most of the Eskimo subs also play with a high degree of skill so the drop-off in talent from the starters wasn’t that great.
Vikings’ ninth-grader Lily Gruber-Schulz (6 points) played well in the second half, attacking the basket and squaring off against Molly Trapp and Esko’s other big girls underneath the hoop.
Theresa Morrin also had a good game, scoring 8 points while Breana Peterson and Kaitlynn Linnell each had 2 points. As for Linnell, the Vikings’ center battled hard all night for rebounds, but short of bringing a ladder out onto the court, she found it tough to get boards from sisters who can practically reach up and pluck the twinkle from the stars.
Second-ranked Rangers beats Vikings
After 8 minutes of mad scramble play the score was 2-2 and the Vikings had shown Mountain Iron-Buhl (MIB) they were going to compete as hard as they could with the top-ranked Ranger girls until they wore down. And that’s what MIB’s pressure defense did to a thin Viking line-up—wore them down before cruising to a 71-26 victory.
Despite the score the Vikings acquitted themselves well against MIB in a game played at home on Monday, December 17.
The Rangers have been averaging 95 points a game this year and are ranked second in Minnesota for Class A schools. They have a deep bench and run a full court press pretty much the whole game, and the press gave the Vikings fits in the first half.
At halftime the Vikings trailed by more then 30 points and it looked like the Rangers would hit their average of 95 points.
During half time Head Coach Todd Toulouse settled his players down and got them ready to break MIB’s press. Staying out of the corners, the Vikings were able to time and time again break the press, and although their shooting was off, they had a lot of good looks and played good defense against a team whose every player is capable of scoring.
Vikings’ center/forward Kaitlynn Linnell was a force for the Vikings on the inside. She grabbed 7 rebounds and scored 8 points in the second half.
Breana Peterson led Viking scorers with 9 points and did a good job of taking care of the ball in the second half as did Theresa Morrin (5 points), Leah Utities (2 points), and Lily Gruber-Schulz (2 points).
Again, despite the final score, this was a breakthrough for a young team not used to handling the kind of intense pressure a deep team is likely to use against them in future games.
“We did break their press really well,” said Coach Toulouse, adding, “That is why they fell back into their half court 1-2-2. We just don’t have a girl yet that will take charge on offense and be the leader on the floor.”
Another blow from Barnum
Playing back-to-back home games is tough enough, even for the pros. But playing back-toback games that include making the second game a long road trip to Barnum gets very tough. And indeed, it ended up a frustrating trip for the Viking girls who fell to Barnum, 53-34.
Still, the Vikings played well for a half, trailing 28-22 before running out of energy and being outscored 25-12 in the second half.
Lily Gruber-Schulz scored 11 points for the Vikings while Breana Peterson netted 7 and three players, Kaitlynn Linnell, Jamie Sjogren, and Theresa Morrin each scored 4 points while Leah Utities had 3 points for the night.
“The game last night wasn’t a good one in the fact that we turned the ball over and they didn’t pressure us at all during the game. I called about 10 specific plays and they didn’t run one of them. We need to take care of the basketball more and look to be more aggressive on the offensive end. If we would have given the effort we did against M.I.B. we would have won, but they didn’t play to their potential. Tons of stuff to work on in practice,” said Toulouse.
The Vikings are getting a much-needed break, not playing again until December 27 in Virginia.
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