Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
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By JASON JUNO [email protected] LAKE LINDEN — Ewen-Trout Creek keeps getting better at defending Lake Linden-Hubbell’s All-U.P. backcourt. When the Panthers gave up 51 points to Cleo Milkey and Emily Jokela in a regular-season game last year, they lost. In the next meeting, that number was down to 34, and E-TC won a close regional tournament matchup in March. And on Thursday night in Lake Linden’s gym, the Panthers only surrendered a combined 22 points and they dominated the Lakes for a 56-41 victory. “They’re both really good,” E-TC...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] IRONWOOD — The Ewen-Trout Creek girls are ranked fourth in the first Michigan Sports Writer Girls Basketball Poll of the season. The Panthers are still second in the U.P. Division 4 poll. St. Ignace is first in both the D-4 U.P. and statewide polls. The Saints avenged an earlier loss to Sault Ste. Marie, which is ranked fourth in the U.P. big-school poll, last week with a 57-46 road win. E-TC picked up a big victory last week as well, winning 56-41 at Lake Linden-Hubbell, which dropped two spots to f...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] WAKEFIELD — Wakefield-Marenisco won’t need their bus anymore come February. The Cardinals end the season with seven straight home games followed by the district tournament in their gym. All of those late home games don’t come without a lot of travel early on. After six straight on the road, the Cardinals played their home opener, Friday night, Jan. 3, before going on the road for another three-game stretch. Lake Linden-Hubbell spoiled their first home game with a 68-53 victory. The Lakes are ranked third...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] IRONWOOD — The Ewen-Trout Creek girls are second in the first Upper Peninsula basketball poll of the season. The Panthers, ranked behind St. Ignace in the Division 4 poll, started the season at 7-1 with their only loss coming at the top-ranked big school, Negaunee. E-TC has a pair of top-five matchups coming up this month with a trip to No. 3 Lake Linden-Hubbell Thursday and a home game against No. 5 L’Anse on Jan. 21. Perennial power St. Ignace got more first-place votes, four, than E-TC, which had two...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] NEGAUNEE - As far as girls basketball goes in the Upper Peninsula, it doesn't get much better than Negaunee. The Miners are a mainstay in the big school top five and they made it to the state semifinal last season - in Division 2, the second biggest of the four groupings in Michigan. Ewen-Trout Creek, with 58 students in their high school compared to Negaunee's 433, wasn't deterred by any of that. The Panthers went into Lakeview Gym Friday night and made...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] BESSEMER — Rivals Ewen-Trout Creek and Bessemer can usually be counted on for some pretty entertaining matchups, whether it’s in the district tournament, or for positioning in the league. Tuesday night was not one of those games. The Panthers were nevertheless happy to take the 43-33 low-scoring win. “Anytime you can win on the road when you’re not scoring it worth a darn is good,” E-TC coach Brad Besonen said. Both teams are battling injuries. Bessemer missed Leland Hollenbeck, who should return af...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] EWEN — One week into the season and Ewen-Trout Creek already appears to be living up to the preseason hype. First, they went to Norway and won 61-35 over the Knights while holding All-U.P. First Team selection Lauren Adams to just four points. Then, they hosted Ironwood and fended off one of their biggest challengers in the Copper Mountain Conference for a 58-35 victory Friday night. They smothered the Red Devils’ top two scorers, who combined for eight points. “Ewen is probably one of the top teams...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] IRONWOOD — Bessemer has some pretty strong options inside with bigs Audrey Stone and Maddie Guglielmotto. Ironwood made sure they didn’t get the ball very often as they blitzed the Speedgirls for a 56-13 victory Tuesday night. “That was definitely the game plan going in, to limit scoring opportunities for the bigs inside,” Ironwood coach Jesse Mackey said. “I thought our girls had great position all night and our guards brought a lot of pressure to their guards. They couldn’t even get the pass in.” B...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] IRONWOOD — The younger team led all night, but the more experienced group made the plays in crunch time as Ironwood rallied past Wakefield-Marenisco for an improbable 50-48 season-opening win Monday night. The Cardinals led 48-39 after a Chase Lane 3 early in the fourth quarter, but they didn’t score again. W-M turned it over to Ironwood with 58.5 seconds left and the Devils’ returning All-U.P. player, Axton Ruotsala, pulled up for a long 2 to tie the game at 48. He then stole the inbound pass, givin...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] LANSING — The MHSAA is going all in on seeding for its boys and girls district basketball tournaments in the spring. The state had only dipped its toes into seeding for the last several years — it ranked only the top two teams with the goal of the best teams meeting in the district final. But that’s all it did. The higher seeded teams weren’t guaranteed to get the home games it seemingly earned and the 1 seeds didn’t always get to play the weaker teams leading up to the district final. Now all of the te...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] MARQUETTE — Wakefield-Marenisco junior Noelle Grace earned a spot on the All-U.P. volleyball team for the second year in a row. After making the Division 4 First Team last year, Grace this year became one of 16 Dream Team selections in voting at last week’s second annual volleyball meeting of the Upper Peninsula Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association. Ironwood’s Audra Pawlak and Hanna Vaughn were selected to the Division 1-3 First Team with a trio of Ewen-Trout Creek players named to the Division 4 F...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] EWEN — The Ewen-Trout Creek girls keep adding hardware to the trophy case. And it’s not even basketball season yet. After winning their first U.P. cross country title last month, the Panthers won the MHSAA Division 4 District 97 volleyball title with a four-set win over Wakefield-Marenisco Thursday night. It was E-TC’s first district volleyball title since the MHSAA combined the U.P. and L.P. tournaments into one state tournament in 2000. While the Panthers were favored going into the U.P. cross count...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] HOUGHTON — Ewen-Trout Creek couldn’t pull off two upsets in a row as the No. 2-ranked team in the Upper Peninsula, Hancock, ended their historic season with a 3-0 sweep of the Panthers in Tuesday night’s MHSAA Division 4 regional semifinal. The Bulldogs made the short drive over the Portage Lake Lift Bridge to Houghton High School and jumped on the Panthers for a 25-8, 25-10, 25-20 victory. Hancock’s schedule is as tough as anyone’s in the U.P. They are one of only two U.P. teams to take a set from big sc...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] IRONWOOD — Ironwood’s Aubrey Smith added another honor to her special senior season. The Division 2 U.P. champion was named to the All-U.P. Dream Team by the U.P. Cross Country Coaches Association after the season. Smith was the only D-2 runner on the seven-member Dream Team. She was joined on the team by U.P. Runner of the Year, Pickford’s Talya Schreiber, who won the D-3 title; two-time D-1 champion Tessa Rautiola of Houghton, who competed against Smith at many regular-season meets; Marquette’s Ella Fu...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] MUNISING — Ironwood’s Aubrey Smith and the Ewen-Trout Creek girls lived up to expectations on Saturday as they became U.P. champions at the Upper Peninsula cross country finals at Pictured Rocks Golf Course. — — — Division 2 Smith had recorded the fastest time among the Division 2 runners during the regular season and she led the entire race Saturday, finishing in under 20 minutes with a time of 19:57, more than 25 seconds ahead of runner-up Ella Keranen of Hancock. There’s some pressure to being the f...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] IRONWOOD — Four Ewen-Trout Creek girls placed in the top 10 at the final Copper Mountain Conference meet of the season Thursday at Gogebic Country Club in Ironwood, giving them their sixth straight meet victory of the season. Their success throughout the season earned them the league’s Team of the Year award. Ironwood’s Aubrey Smith has been the best individual runner throughout the season; she won her home meet Thursday and earned the league’s Most Valuable Runner award. The Panthers are hoping to wrap...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] CHASSELL — Aubrey Smith has been the one runner preventing Division 1 Houghton from sweeping the top four individual finishes at most of Ironwood’s cross country meets this year. It’s been pretty much the same for the Ewen-Trout Creek girls except the Panthers have been finishing behind both Houghton and Hancock in their first season with a full team. Smith scanned the field at the starting line at Thursday’s BlueBolts Panther Invite and didn’t see any of the Houghton runners. Smith and the Panthers...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] IRONWOOD --- The winter’s snow was long gone, a rare feat for Ironwood’s annual Kraemer Invitational track-and-field meet. Also wishing for good weather for the late April meet at Longyear Field may have been asking a bit much, though. The off-and-on rain may not have been pleasant to compete in, but at least they got the oft-canceled meet completed. “That was a tough one,” E-TC coach Brad Besonen said. “But the kids did fantastic.” He was impressed with the times the Panthers ‘ runners ended up with...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] MARQUETTE --- Ewen-Trout Creek's Bree Besonen joined a pretty exclusive club last week. The eighth grader was named to the All-U.P. Second Team at the 49th annual Upper Peninsula Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association girls basketball meeting last week. She's believed to be one of just three girls to ever be named to the All-U.P. team as an eighth grader. She knows the other two pretty well - they're her sisters. Elise Besonen made it in 2017 and...
MARQUETTE --- Ewen-Trout Creek’s super scorer, the leader of Wakefield-Marenisco’s district championship team and Ironwood’s floor leader were named to the All-U.P. Division 4 Second Team at Monday’s meeting of the Upper Peninsula Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association. Ewen-Trout Creek’s Austin Gordon, Ironwood’s Axton Ruotsala and Wakefield-Marenisco’s Carter Cole joined nine other top players on the Second Team. Gordon, a 5-11 junior, made the list for the second straight year. His 24.1 point per game scoring average ranked second in th...
By LARRY HOLCOMBE [email protected] IRONWOOD — The Globe’s editorial and advertising staffs were recently honored with awards from the Michigan Press Association and the Wisconsin Newspaper Association. Sports Editor Jason Juno earned awards for both news and sports writing, as well as sports photography. A story Juno wrote about a successful effort to find a missing boy in the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park on May 11, 2023, earned first place in the MPA’s Spot News Story category. Entitled “Safe and Sound,” the same story too...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] The MHSAA is unlikely to add a fifth basketball division soon. "There were conversations at the AD in-service and sport committee meetings over the fall and winter just to gauge interest, but there aren't any proposals or movement on this," Geoff Kimmerly of the MHSAA told The Globe Tuesday. The smallest schools in the state, like Ewen-Trout Creek and Watersmeet, have longed for a fifth division like neighboring Wisconsin has. It came to a head this...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] BARAGA --- One of the first things people noticed when Ewen-Trout Creek came to town was their youth — after all, their starting lineup consists of three sophomores and two eighth graders. Coach Jacky Besonen never accepted that easy excuse as they navigated the Copper Country Conference and its gauntlet of teams ranked in the top five in the Upper Peninsula. They added bigger schools, Houghton and Menominee, when openings popped up on their schedule. “I knew they could be successful this year even tho...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] IRONWOOD --- There are more complaints than compliments now that the MHSAA has dipped its toes into seeding the district basketball tournaments. Higher seeds don't automatically get home games - they should. Only the top two teams are seeded - why aren't the rest of the district teams? Those are the most common complaints and maybe they'll be addressed someday. But for all its faults, Michigan's limited seeding method often does the one thing it's...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] HOUGHTON --- Lake Linden-Hubbell has two of the best scorers in the Upper Peninsula in Emily Jokela and Cleo Milkey. The Lakes' 1-2 punch led them to a top-five ranking in the U.P. all season and to a 23-win campaign. Ewen-Trout Creek, though, counters with more scoring options, three players who've been scoring consistently all season. All three, plus a fourth, MaKayla Basel, hit double figures in Monday's MHSAA Division 4 regional semifinal against the L...
