HS Girls Basketball Team Breaks 84-Game Skid with 3 Eligible Players on Court

Your team has not suffered like the Climax-Fisher Knights.

No matter how Raider-y or 76ers-esque your program is, it has not endured their unique brand of pain. Even Prairie View, the Division I-AA football team that lost 80 straight games during the 1990s, has technically suffered a shorter string of defeats than the Climax-Fisher girls basketball team, which finally broke its four-year losing streak Tuesday despite incredibly unfavorable odds.

Inforum.com's Chris Murphy reports the Knights beat Bagley High 62-58 in double overtime, breaking a streak of 84 consecutive losses. The kicker, in this case, is that Climax-Fisher ended its nearly half-decade-long skid with only three players on the court.

Murphy reports that all but three Knights fouled out over the course of the double-overtime victory. The last women standing were sophomore Mikayla Vasek, freshman Sophie Love and spectacularly named sophomore Christina Cakebread.

According to Murphy, only Vasek had any experience as a varsity starter. Even then, she had only started in three games.

"I couldn't even describe it," Vasek told Murphy. "I was scared. They had five and we were probably the three most inexperienced varsity players. I knew we could do it. We just had to give it all of our heart and desire. We couldn't stop. We didn't have a choice."

Climax-Fisher's disadvantage began at the end of regulation, when a foul led to a five-on-four situation. Another foul in the second overtime brought their number to three.

Climax-Fisher coach Jonathon Vonesh said he had nothing in the playbook for such a situation: "I've never seen anything like it, and I've never been a part of anything like it. In practice we obviously work on some disadvantages, but never five-on-three. The girls had the desire…. The determination was just ridiculous."

Vonesh described the win as "emotional."

"It was like we won a championship," Vonesh said. "Kids jumped off the bench. Parents ran down. It was awesome. If you can't get excited after a win like that, there's nothing that's going to get you excited."

Senior Climax-Fisher captain Emily Love fouled out of the game. After playing three years of varsity without a single win, she said the emotional onus of the losses has finally lifted: "Everybody had tears in their eyes. Everybody was jumping. Everybody was speechless. I didn't know what to say. The weight is definitely gone."

Remember, everyone: Even in the darkest jungle of despair, there is always hope. You just have to believe in yourself and, more importantly, hope the other team is freaked out by your demon-like intensity and chokes big-time.

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