Ravenna is a basketball team

[Bob Hamar]

I'm sitting courtside at Pershing Auditorium watching Ravenna roll past Cambridge in a Class C-2 state semifinal game. The Bluejays also won the Class C-2 state volleyball championship last fall, but it just hit me that this group of Ravenna athletes is a bunch of basketball players who also managed a volleyball title, not the other way around.

Madison Pernicek is headed for Wayne State to play volleyball, and she'll do very well there, but she is the best 6-foot point guard I've seen for a long time. She just moved to the point this year because that was the only position the Bluejays lost from last year's team. There are a couple of other players on the squad who cuold play the point, but I don't think any of them could do it as well as Pernicek. That's why she's there. Jeff Thober knows what he's doing.

Mallory Irvine is a tough, tough inside player who can also shoot the three, and Taryn McDowell is an offensive threat at all times. The Bluejays go nine deep, and those nine are all pretty good. That's why they are 26-0 heading into the state final against a very good Aquinas team. Irvine and Katie Holoubek - who had 24 in Aquinas' semifinal win over Perkins County, will have a good battle inside.