CHURCHILL – The Manhattan Christian girls basketball team got a career night out of Kelsey Heidema on its way to the District 11C championship over Lone Peak Saturday night. Heidema poured in 22 points on 9-of-14 shooting to lead the Eagles to victory, 53-37.
“It was incredible to have the other kids step up,” Manhattan Christian head coach Scott Wolf said. “They face-guarded Alex (Veltkamp) to try to take her out of the game, and she still had 15 points, which is pretty incredible. But Kelsey giving us 22 and playing the whole fourth quarter with four fouls, Jill Frye giving us a career-high 14 points, it was a fantastic game for us.”
Heidema picked up her fourth foul late in the third quarter, but remained in the game the rest of the way and played without picking up her fifth and final foul. Frye knocked down four 3-pointers, including one in the third quarter to push the Eagles’ lead to double-digits for good.
Junior Shelby Walls’ impact wasn’t felt in the box score, but her defensive effort has been something missing from Manhattan Christian’s team all season long.
“(Shelby) was out early in the season with an ankle injury, and then she had a pretty bad car accident on Jan. 25 and suffered a concussion and was just cleared to play on Friday,” Wolf said. “She played a little bit (Friday) night, and she came off the bench (Saturday) and gave her usual great defense for us. She didn’t get a lot of points, but that’s not what we ask her to do. When we switched to a 1-3-1, she’s so tenacious and so fast out front, she really made a difference in (Saturday’s) game.”
Both Manhattan Christian and Lone Peak will move on to next week’s Western C divisional tournament in Hamilton.
