It was a great year for girls basketball at L.J. Hauser Junior High School this year. Both the seventh and eighth grade girls basketball teams at Hauser finished the recently completed season with perfect 12-0 records to win Salt Creek Valley Conference championships.
The Hauser eighth graders also went undefeated last year as seventh graders, so they will leave Hauser having never lost a junior high school game.
“Everybody played their role very well,” said Tom Burke the coach of the Hauser eighth grade team. “This was an extremely unselfish team. It was a pleasure to coach them. They had great, great, basketball IQ. Probably the highest IQ I’ve seen for a while for this age. It was a really competitive group. They all work well together.”
Burke said his players love the game. Claire Evans was the leading scorer on the eighth-grade team, averaging 10 points per game. The other players on the eighth-grade team were Addison Butler, Maddy Dan, Demetra Foster, Iliana Gomez, Nuala Lubeck, Greta Lupfer, Lucy McAllister, Gwen McNally, Sloane McNally, Mia Wichmanowski, and Reese Zalewski.
The Hauser seventh grade girls team, coached by Derek Harvey, also went undefeated and were conference champions. Ella Ryzewski led the seventh-grade team in scoring, averaging 10 points per game.
The eighth grade Hauser boys basketball team finished in third place in the conference with an 8-4 record. The seventh-grade boys team at Hauser finished 11-1, and were conference co-champions sharing the conference title with Lindop School, which is located in Broadview.
The girls basketball teams at S.E. Gross Middle School in Brookfield both finished in second place in the Salt Creek Valley Conference this year. The Gross eighth grade girls basketball team compiled a record of 8-4, while the seventh graders finished 10-2.
The eighth-grade boys basketball team at Gross won the conference title with a 11-1 record, while the seventh grade boys finished third in the conference with a record of 8-4.
The Gross cheerleading squad won the conference tournament that was held at Riverside Brookfield High School.
“Their high-flying, stunt-filled routine had the crowd out of their seats and received a nearly perfect score,” Gross Principal Ryan Evans said in an email to parents.