Lincoln beats Chatham Glenwood to win Illinois Class 3A girls basketball championship (story/photo gallery)
NORMAL, ILLINOIS – There may be bigger basketball towns than Lincoln, but to Kloe Froebe there aren't any better ones.
The Railsplitters have one of the greatest hoops legacies in Illinois, dating back to the first boys season back in 1913. The boys program has 1,934 wins and counting, the last 796 under 34-year head coach Neil Alexander. He's one of five coaches to take the Railsplitters to the boys state tournament.
And under girls coach Taylor Rohrer, now Lincoln has a basketball state title courtesy of Froebe – one of the greatest scorers in IHSA history – and her teammates.
Froebe, a Colorado State recruit, earlier this season became the 10th girl in Illinois to reach 3,000 career points. On Saturday night at CEFCU Arena, she scored 36 more as the Railsplitters beat Central State Eight rival Glenwood 60-44 to win the Class 3A championship.
Fellow senior guard Becca Heitzig added 13 points as Lincoln won the school's first team state title in any sport.
Freshman forward Alexis Neumann led Glenwood with 15 points and eight rebounds.
The Railsplitters became the second team in IHSA history to win 38 games and complete an unbeaten state-title run. Ironically, Loyola became the third team to achieve that a few hours later when it won the 4A championship.
This one was for all the folks back home in Lincoln, who saw the Railsplitters take a perfect record into last year's 3A final before they fell to Nazareth.
"Yeah, it's a basketball town," Froebe said. "And seeing all the years they supported the boys and my sister's group – we saw how the community came out to support the girls. Just to have them here to fill that upper deck, to fill the stands ...
"We said we're going to have a parade in Lincoln today."
The title game was the teams' second matchup this season. Lincoln won the first one by 34 and looked to be headed to another runaway. The Railsplitters led 26-6 after one quarter as Froebe scored 14 on 5-for-6 shooting from the field and 4-for-4 from the line.
"We came out really fired up and we wanted to hit hard right there in the first quarter," Rohrer said. "Our experience helped us in that first quarter just to settle in a little bit faster than them."
Glenwood (28-8) didn't go away, though. The Titans, who started two freshmen and a junior along with two seniors, kept chipping at the deficit. They were down 34-17 at halftime and twice got within 12 points in the third quarter.
But in the end, Froebe and the Railsplitters weren't going to be denied.
"Last year was probably one of the worst feelings I've ever felt," senior guard Jenna Bowman said. "Hated getting second, hated it.
"But it just motivated us so much. And now this is probably one of the best feelings I've ever had."
Here is a look at the game from photographer Tim Vizer:
Illinois Class 3A girls basketball championship
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- Mike Clark | latsch@scorebooklive.com | @SBLiveIL
