MILWAUKEE (AP) -- No one expected the South Shore High School Cardinals to win the regional basketball championship game last weekend, but when they did -- defeating the Mellen Granite Diggers -- tears flowed.
They were not tears of happiness, though. The girls who play for the tiny northern Wisconsin community of Port Wing in Bayfield County knew it was their last game of the season.
So instead of preparing to play in the WIAA Division 5 sectional semifinal Thursday, South Shore players will cheer for the team they defeated now that Mellen will move on to the next round after South Shore forfeited (Siren defeated Mellen, 66-25).
South Shore couldn't take the court for sectionals because it didn't have enough players, and the WIAA says five are required to start a game.
How did this happen?
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In a high school located on the shore of Lake Superior, where 20 of the 42 students are girls, more than half of the female student population plays basketball. Of the 11 girls on the team, nine also happen to play in the 14-piece band.
Nothing unusual about that, especially in a small school. However, last year when the school made arrangements for a band trip to Seattle, no one thought about the girls basketball championships.
The day of the regional championship -- Saturday -- was also the day the band left on an Amtrak train for its Seattle trip. Band members had spent much of the school year raising $900 each through spaghetti dinners, cookie sales and silent auctions. The South Shore band joined high school bands from Ely, Minn., and International Falls, Minn., to play at a university in Seattle as well as sightsee this week before returning home over the weekend.
But the Cardinals kept winning.
With a 12-8 record, South Shore was seeded fourth in the regional tournament. First it defeated the Butternut Midgets, 53-33, in the opening round of regionals last week. But then the girls faced the No. 1-seeded Winter Warriors on Friday night in the regional semifinal, a game few expected them to win.
Down 12 points in the fourth quarter, the Cardinals battled back to tie the game with 45 seconds left. Senior guard Lindsey Olson grabbed a pass from sophomore center Emily Gustafson to put South Shore up by two. Olson then stole the ball from the Warriors and scored on another layup. Winter managed only two free throws before time ran out, 67-65.
The victory sent South Shore to the regional championship in Ashland on Saturday night against Mellen. Most of the band members who were on the basketball team left for Seattle that day, but two band members elected to stay behind to play in the championship Saturday night, so the team would have at least six players, and then travel to Seattle later to join the band.
Which put the team in quite a pickle when the Cardinals defeated the Granite Diggers, 65-53, earning them a trip to sectionals but with only four girls left to suit up.
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"Isn't that amazing?" said Clendon Gustafson, South Shore superintendent/principal/director of education. "We have the regional championship plaque and we're hoping we don't have to give it back."
The Cardinals can keep their plaque. Under WIAA rules it wasn't a forced forfeit, meaning there was no infraction such as an ineligible player, said Todd Clark, director of communications.
With only four players left, South Shore contacted the WIAA and Mellen on Monday morning. Rachel Penner, Mellen's varsity girls coach, was surprised to get a call from Gustafson. Her players had turned in their uniforms Saturday night after the loss.
Gustafson asked Penner if she and her team were interested in playing Siren in the sectional semifinals Thursday. Penner asked if he was serious.
"That was the same reaction from my players," said Penner, adding that her players then reacted like teenagers. "It was the shrill screaming of high school girls. They're all pretty excited about the second chance, which unfortunately came from South Shore's forfeit."
Clark has worked for the WIAA for at least a decade and can't recall another basketball team in recent memory forfeiting a trip to sectionals because it did not have enough players.
South Shore has fielded some good girls basketball teams in the past. The Cardinals earned trips to the state tournament in 2002 and 2004, finishing second in '04, when Jolene Anderson was running the offense. Anderson played at the University of Wisconsin and became UW's first Big Ten Player of the Year -- in 2008 -- and was later drafted by the Connecticut Sun of the WNBA. She's now playing professionally in Turkey.
For the South Shore players, the happiness of hoisting the regional championship plaque was soon replaced with the cold realization that they did not have the numbers to field a full team.
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"It was really hard to find out that we didn't have the opportunity to play at sectionals after all our hard work," said Andrea Tuura, a junior guard/forward. "It was just really hard and upsetting, but we're glad we made it that far because that was a big deal for us. We were kind of the underdogs throughout the whole thing. We proved them wrong."
Tuura and Emily Gustafson, the superintendent's daughter, both play in the band but elected not to go on the band trip once they learned it might conflict with the basketball playoffs. Tuura plays clarinet, Gustafson, a sophomore center, plays flute.
For Breanna Meyers and Olson, both seniors, it was their last season in a Cardinals uniform. Olson, a 5-foot-7 guard, has averaged 19 points a game this season and was the high scorer in the regional semifinal and finals, pouring in 36 points against Winter and 24 in the victory over Mellen.
"I think if we had our full team, we definitely could have been in the sectional championship. We had a lot of potential, we could have made it to state," said Olson, who plans to try out for the basketball team next year at the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth.
Added Meyers: "Honestly, as a senior it sucks we can't move on to sectionals and see how far we could go. It's a good feeling to end on a win, not a loss."
Mellen faced the Siren Dragons in Hayward in the sectional semifinals Thursday night. The South Shore players, at least those still in the state, said they'll cheer for Mellen.
