2011 Lady Cougars and the WIT to be inducted into the IBCA Hall of Fame

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By BETH ZUMWALT

Twelve years ago, West Central fans were licking their chops thinking about their chances of bringing home two state trophies. The Lady Cougars were enroute to a 32-3 season complete with a state title. The boys finished the season in second place with a 31-5 record.

“The town was crazy,” Ashlyn Jacquot Sanders, now a nurse in Bedford, Texas and a starting guard on the championship team, said. “There were signs all over town and signs along the streets we took when we left to go to Peoria.”

Jacquot-Sanders said none of the team members were surprised by the team’s success.

“We’d been playing together since little kids in league ball,” she said. “From seventh grade on, they told us we’d be state champions someday.”

The wins the girls earned over the 2010-2011 season were amazing. Only two losses, both to AA schools, QND and Illini West. QND went on to win the 2A title the same year.

Despite being heavily favored in most local competitions, the girls knew it could go wrong if they didn’t work hard.

“I don’t think we realized how good we were,” Alex Schaad Monet, a starter on the team said.. “We lost in the regional our freshman year and again in our junior year. Then our senior year, the closer we got, the more we began to believe. We weren’t cocky, we just knew we were good.”

After breezing through the North Greene Regional, winning both games by more than 30 points, the The Lady Cougars had no trouble in the sectional, defeating Marissa, 51-22 and Carrollton, 55-33 in the sectional.

The sectional win sent the girls to the Jacksonville Super-Sectional to play Havanna.

“We had lost to the Lady Ducks before in tournament play and numerous times in summer and traveling league play,” Jacquot-Sanders said.

The game was a thriller.

“They say our super-sectional game was one of the best games ever,” Tiffany King Risley, center on the team and now a special education teacher, said. “People still talk about it. We just took over the game.”

Final score, West Central, 64-41.

In the semi-final at Peoria, the girls won over Hume Shiloh, 64-33 and took the title with a 29-26 win over Hanover Ridge Co-op.

Andrea LIetz said one of the funnest parts of the season, besides the success, was the friendship and close feelings with her teammates.

“We always communicated well, on and off the floor,” she said. “We always knew what the others were thinking. We spent a lot of time trying to make Coach Bettis smile.”

Leitz just finished schooling and will soon begin work in Macomb as a labor and delivery nurse.

Karlee VanDeVelde, currently finishing up her degree to be a nurse anesthetist.

“We were a special group,” VanDeVelde said. “We had always played well together. We’ve stayed close. We’ve been in each other’s weddings and kept in touch.”

Brian Bettis, coach of the team, said the girls were a special group that just gelled.

“They played so well together,” he said. “And no, I didn’t smile very much, but I enjoyed coaching those girls. The starters were like a machine and when we needed help, Dakota Nicholson and Cassidy Kauffman were the other seniors on the team.”

The induction ceremony is May 6 in Redbird Arena on the campus of Illinois State University. All the girls say they are planning to attend the banquet.

Others in Scott County will probably be attending also as the Winchester Invitational Tournament is being honored as event of the year for 100 years of longevity.

“I’m really honored to be inducted into the Hall of Fame the same year as the Winchester Invitational Tournament,” Jacquot-Sanders said. “It is an honor for our town to receive this recognition and for us to be a part of it. I’m just so proud.”