Hermantown Girls Set to Battle Defending Section Champs Hibbing

Tip-off for Thursday's section title game is set for 7 p.m. at Denfeld High School.

HERMANTOWN, Minn. – The Hermantown girls basketball team have justified their top-seed ranking in the Section 7AAA playoffs and are now sitting in the section title game.

The Hawks have overcome a lot of adversity since last season, losing several key players to injury either at the start of the season or right before the playoffs. But now, they are healthy which is something they are definitely not taking for granted.

“I think that makes a big difference in the confidence for our kids because they’ve been able to kind of persevere a little bit and needed to do and work on the task at hand. They were able to play as a team, work hard as a team and then be able to accomplish some of those things this year that we weren’t able to do last year,” head coach Beth Clark said.

Up next for the Hawks is the defending section champs Hibbing. The two teams have met twice in the past month, which means the scouting reports will be relatively fresh.

“It’s going to be tough. They’re a good team. They’ve got some good guards that hit the boards hard. We beat them by one our first game and then two our second game so we know it’s going to be a tough battle,” guard Ava Asgaard said.

“We definitely know a lot about what they can do, their personnel, what they’ll do defensively and offensively. It just comes down to us executing. If we can’t execute, we’re going to struggle. If we play good defense, we’ll be OK. But it’s going to come down to execution,” said Clark.

Tip-off for Thursday’s section title game is set for 7 p.m. at Denfeld High School.