Sports News

Basketball is a game played and won generally by teams with a number of upperclassmen playing key roles.
Hillsboro coach Elliot Rotvold knows this.
But, some years, you play with the hand you’re dealt.
Rotvold can testify to this.
When Jake Olsen broke his foot early in the season, Rotvold was without the only experienced player returning from last year.
Already with an inexperienced team, the Burros were suddenly without 10 points and 10 rebounds a game.
Making matters worse, the teams to beat this year in District 3 and the Red River Valley Conference were loaded with experienced players.
Not Hillsboro.
Going into the season, Rotvold was hoping his team could finish “in the middle of the pack,” possibly play .500 ball and scare some teams in the post-season.
Then Jake went down with a broken foot.
The Burros and Elliot Rotvold were without their best player.
It soon became evident sophomores Jamie Horne and Aaron Meyer would have to carry the offense for the Burros.
“When you have two sophomores as your leading scorers,” Rotvold said, “you know you might be in for some tough times.”
But, he said, “the young kids played hard.”
And they were put in a tough position, he added.
“But basketball is a game of upperclassmen.”
This is the first year Rotvold has been forced to play younger players.
“I’ve always had a junior or senior that I could depend on to score.”
His two seniors this year, Ben Gordon and Keith Asheim, were role players; their mission: rebound.
“They did everything we asked of them. They played their butts off.”
But they weren’t shooters.
Starting much of the season were Meyer, Horne and Brian Smelden, in addition to Asheim and Gordon. Freshman Zach Grothmann was given minutes toward the end of the season.
Olsen, Meyer, Horne, Smelden and Grothmann will return next year.
“The future looks bright,” admitted Hillsboro’s coach.

The Burros, Hatton-Northwood and Dakota Prairie might be pegged as the teams to beat next year.
Many of this year’s district teams will be hurt by graduation.
Rotvold tells how the coaches are already been looking ahead to next year. Which means, he said, the returning players will be expected to play basketball over the summer months.
Meanwhile, Rotvold is totaling year-end statistics and reviewing his team’s district showing.
His team, he said, “played about as well as could be expected” against Thompson, the eventual District 3 champ.
Thompson beat the Burros, 43-33, last Friday.
“We played them as well as anyone did.”
The Burros handled the Thompson pressure buy not the Tommies’ offensive rebounding, Rotvold explained. “We gave them too many second opportunities.”
The Tommies claimed the title by stomping MayPort-CG, 65-42.
Thompson proved to be the class of the tournament, according to the Burro coach.
The Burros fell behind Hatton-Northwood in the first half, a situation Rotvold cautioned his team against happening.
“We need to be ahead at halftime,” the Burro coaches instructed the team.
Meanwhile, the Burros didn’t attack the Thunder defense.
“We passed the ball around the perimeter, we didn’t attack and that hurt us. We weren’t aggressive.”
The Burros are out of their element when erasing significant leads.
Playing catch-up, Rotvold explains, “is not our style.”
The Thunder, meanwhile, made 15 of 17 fourth quarter free throws, and the lead went from 8 points to 20 points “pretty quick,” Rotvold said.
After playing in six straight region tournaments, the Burros will be watching from the stands next week, when the Region 2 tourney opens at the Betty Engelstad Sioux Center in Grand Forks.
Maybe next year; this year, the upperclassmen had the upper hand.