Seneca brings home 2A regional championship from Beecher, 50-34

BEECHER − For the fourth season in a row, the Seneca girls basketball team found itself playing in a regional championship game. After coming up short in the previous three, the Fighting Irish took down Manteno on Friday in the Class 2A Beecher Regional to claim the program’s first regional title since 2020.

Seneca did not trail Friday, taking control early and holding an 11-point lead at the end of the first quarter. The lead grew to 15 points by halftime. The Irish led by as many as 21 points in the second half of a 50-34 win.

“This group is awesome,” Seneca coach Josh Myers, in his second season with the program, said. “They came in last year to all the summer stuff with a new coach when these seniors were juniors. We had everybody coming back from last year’s team, besides graduating one senior, and I thought we did a great job this summer getting a lot better.

“They just kept on fighting and getting better throughout the year.”

Seneca improved to 25-8. Senior Alyssa Zellers led the team with 13 points, while fellow seniors Evelyn O’Connor and Lainie Olson added nine points and six points, respectively. Junior Tessa Krull also had six points.

“The best thing about our girls is Alyssa Zellers is probably one of our best scorers, and she doesn’t always have to,” Myers said. “She can distribute it and get it to other girls that can also score. It’s really good to be balanced the way we are, especially when [Manteno] went zone early on, I thought we were able to figure out where our openings were, and those girls hit some shots for us.”

Zellers said it was nice for the team to break through with a regional title after coming up short in recent years.

“It feels great,” she said. “We’ve worked really hard, and we’ve done a lot through practice. Not even just in basketball, we’re just a really good team to bond with.”

Manteno came into Friday’s game looking for a second straight regional title. Instead, the loss put an end to one of the best seasons in program history.

The Panthers (24-5) set a new school record for wins, surpassing the previous total of 19 set in 1990. They also won a conference title for the first time since 1990.

Coach Bethany Stritar said that these achievements did not do much to ease the sting of the loss, but the team can still look back on them with pride.

“We had everyone get a chance to talk in the locker room, and everybody reminded each other of all the things we have accomplished this year,” she said. “Of course we’re sad that we lost. This is not when we thought that would happen, and we wanted to extend our season, but they know how special they are, and they know that they’ve left a legacy on Manteno basketball.”

Sophomore Maddie Gesky led Manteno with 15 points, eight of which came in the fourth quarter. Junior Lila Prindeville added eight points, all in the second half.

Stritar said she knew this group had the potential to do big things even before the season started based solely on the dedication they showed.

“I think more than anything, they’re competitors, and they want to win, and they want to play for each other,” she said. “They’re great teammates, and they did a lot of things to help each other and to want to win for each other. So they came into practices every day to make that happen.”

Seneca now heads into the semifinals of the 2A Herscher Sectional. As the Irish get set to play Bishop McNamara on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m., Zellers said the team is looking to finish strong as a group.

“I’m looking for us to work hard and try our best, just work together to get through it and do good in practice,” she said. “Hopefully it works out.”