The past week, the basketball teams competed in the most important part of the season: sub-state. The boys basketball team was the number two seed going into the tournament. In the first game, Conway Springs played at home against the Sedgwick Cardinals at 7 p.m. Feb. 28.

    Although it was a close score of 11-10 after the first quarter, seniors Josh Dugan, Noah Finstad and Jacob Winter combined for a total of 47 points to clinch the victory over Sedgwick. The final score was 69-56.

    “We knew that Sedgwick was a pretty good team,” Winter said, “but we knew we had to execute in order to get the win and move on.”

    In the second round, the Cardinals faced the 11-9 Halstead Dragons at Garden Plain March 3. Finstad’s season-high 26 points led the team to pick up the 56-45 win over the Dragons. After scoring 26 points, Finstad increased his average to nearly 14 points per game.

    The sub-state championship game tipped off at 7:30 p.m. on March 4 with the Conway Springs Cardinals facing the Cheney Cardinals. The winner would go on to play in the state tournament in Hutchinson.

“We knew that they would be feeling pretty good after beating Hesston, the number three team in the state,” senior Gunnar Denney said.

Although it was a battle all 32 minutes, Cheney’s depth prevailed and Conway Springs fell 60-69 in a season-ending loss. The loss discouraged the team, but Dugan maintains a positive outlook on his season and career at Conway Springs High School.

    “We’ve had our ups and downs,” Dugan said, “but the past two years we’ve made this town into more than just a football town. We’ve made it into a football and basketball town.”

Photos by Rachel Stuhlsatz