Girls basketball: St. Bede salutes the Bruins

PERU – After losing their first game of the season by 65 points, the last thing the St Bede girls basketball team envisioned was a big celebration at the end of the season.

It’s proving to be a celebration that doesn’t plan on stopping any time soon.

Five nights after the Bruins landed a fourth-place finish in the IHSA Class 1A state tournament, St. Bede Academy gathered its hoops heroes for a celebration in front of family, friends and fans Tuesday night at Abbot Vincent Gymnasium.

“It’s starting to feel more real and everything. Coach talked about after the dust settled, and now I’m just grateful and ready to enjoy it with all the girls,” senior captain Ali Bosnich said. “Now that I know I have everyone to back me up, I know I’m not alone when I graduate and go on to college. I will always have a family back home.”

Abbot Michael Calhoun told the gathering it was a “great day to be Bruin. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Second-year coach Stephanie Mickley said St. Bede does its celebrations up right.

“I’m almost speechless because I wasn’t expecting this,” she said. “It’s just how the St. Bede community comes together to celebrate the victories of their programs. It was just a great way to wrap things up and celebrate the girls.”

The 85-20 season-opening loss to Peoria Notre Dame was an eye opener to say the least.

“After that, we were like, ‘OK, either we’re going to laugh about it and pretend it never happened, or we get down and focus on the fact we just lost by 65.’ And we didn’t. We just kind of laughed,” Bosnich said. “We beat Pontiac at their tournament, and that was more than a win to us than the loss to Peoria Notre Dame.”

“I was worried of how they were going to react to that loss because I was feeling bad,” Mickley said. “But I knew playing teams like that was going to make them better. I was just hoping they were going to see that. The next game we lost to Limestone, a good team as well, but it was closer, and they took their game up another level.

“We talked about getting 1 or 2% better [each day]. We had our hiccups. We lost to Annawan, and we lost to Fieldcrest. That’s OK. You learn more from losing than winning.”

No one knew then that St. Bede and Notre Dame would be reunited in Normal with the Irish winning the Class 2A state title and the Bruins taking fourth in Class 1A.

The Bruins had a record-setting season with 29 wins, finishing as Tri-County Conference season and tournament champions, winning the Marquette Regional, the Gardner-South Wilmington Sectional and the Harvest Christian Supersectional to become the first team from the Academy to make state and the first from Bureau County to place at state.

Mickley saw the Bruins’ potential last year despite a 9-21 record in her first season.

“At the end of regionals, we told them what’s coming back, this could be something, and we left it at that,” she said. “We went through the summer and they worked really hard and put in extra work. We saw their chemistry forming. We saw how they were clicking on the floor. I said if we’re going to do it, this is it. They can do it this year.

“It kind of evolved from there. Getting them to believe is probably the hardest thing of the whole thing that they could do hard things and getting their confidence up. And they did, and they flew.”

Bosnich said her class will have a lot to talk about when they come home for class reunions in 20 or 25 years.

“I’m going to be wearing these shirts forever,” she said. “I’m more excited to see my teammates’ futures than my own sometimes, because I know they’ll do such great things and their personalities will take them so far. There was so much chemistry on our team, just because how different we are. The 20th reunion is going to be so insane.”