SUMTER — When Amelia Huebel and Emily Ann Hiers joined the Beaufort Academy girls basketball team as sixth-graders, they didn’t dare dream of winning a state title. They just wanted to win a game.
For their final act as Eagles, Huebel and Hiers and their three fellow seniors walked off the court not only as winners, but as champions, claiming the SCISA 1A title with a 48-27 win over Dorchester Academy on Saturday at the Sumter Civic Center.
“We started off in the sixth grade, and we got clobbered,” Hiers recalls of the duo’s first season playing on the JV squad together. “Like, we never won a game. So to get this state championship is so awesome.”
It didn’t come easily.
BA got off to a sluggish start Saturday, as the Raiders frustrated star freshman Mike’Ala Washington early and the Eagles settled for too many outside shots rather than playing to their strengths.
“Right away I could tell we were not playing our ballgame,” BA coach Lillian Aldred said. “I think the pressure of the situation got to them a little bit, and we changed the press that we were running in the second half and just settled down a little bit and let the game come to us.”
Huebel kept the Eagles in it during their rough patch, scoring 10 of her game-high 15 points in the first half, including a putback after a missed free throw that gave BA an 18-16 halftime advantage.
The Eagles took control in the third quarter, as Heyward scored seven of her eight points in the period and Hiers added all of her six in the frame. More important, BA locked down on defense and outscored the Raiders 16-4 in the quarter to take a commanding lead.
“Coach got us really pumped at halftime and it really motivated us,” Hiers said. “Our press really worked in the second half.”
Washington took over in the fourth, scoring eight of her 14 in the final period to help the Eagles close it out. Any hope Dorchester had of a comeback evaporated when Lydia Hofstetter fouled out after scoring a team-high 13 points.
The finish was a bit anticlimactic considering the journey the Eagles’ five seniors took to get to the moment, but Aldred was able to remove her senior leaders to a standing ovation in the waning moments of an exceptional season and career.
It’s the second state title of the school year for many of the Eagles, who were also on the SCISA 1A champion volleyball team in the fall. Despite having experienced the feeling before, being a state champ never gets old.
“This one is even more special because our school has never won a state championship in girls basketball,” Hiers said. “To do that was awesome, to hang our first banner in our school.”
Story and photos by Justin Jarrett
