HUTCHINSON, KS - The Hesston Swathers did what most teams see as impossible. The Swathers finished the season with a remarkable 26-0 record after beating the Beloit Trojans 59-54 on Friday at the Hutchinson Sports Arena. This marks the first state title for the Swathers since 1985, and only their third championship ever.
“We don’t do it as easy as the girls, but we persevere,” Hesston head coach Greg Raleigh said. “We didn’t talk about it or anything else, but I guess this was our ultimate goal, obviously. So 26-0 is amazing and we had some close ones along the way that helped get us ready for this.”
Hesston knew it wasn’t going to be easy though, as a packed Sports Arena made it very loud, and hard to concentrate. Beloit and Hesston traded the lead and when you think one team was finally going to pull away, the other team would come storming back.
The Trojans were fighting for their lives the whole night, especially after huge 3-pointers by Luke Hesting and Payton Vetter to help bring Beloit back within one. The Trojans led 53-52 with 1:05 remaining, their first lead since midway through the third quarter.
There couldn’t have been any better player for Hesston in the jam-packed arena than Greg Raleigh’s son Grant, a junior. Grant Raleigh drained a 3-pointer with 48 seconds to go, giving the Swathers the lead back.
“My dad’s been trying to put me in those kind of situations my whole life,” said Raleigh, who had hit just 30 percent of his 3-point attempts before the game-winner. “It’s kind of hard to simulate that, but I knew it was going in when it left me and my teammates had confidence in me to make it, too. That’s everything I’ve dreamed of.”
Raleigh led all scorers with 22 points, followed by teammate Ryan Schadler, who finished with 14 in his final game as a Swather.
Hesston came up just short last year, losing in the Class 4A sub-state championship game to host Abilene. The Swathers ended last season with a 20-2 record, but knew more would be expected of them as they moved down to Class 3A this year. They wanted to avenge the sub-state loss and go further this year.
After that loss to Abilene, Raleigh told those players returning for this season: “We’ve got a really good chance to be really good next year if you guys work hard.” And the Swathers worked very hard in the off season.
“They’ve done everything I asked the whole year,” Raleigh said.
The hard work paid off particularly in establishing depth that came up big for Hesston all season.
“We’ve built on that all year long,” coach Raleigh said. “All seven guys that play can score and we’ve got four guys averaging double figures that all had games over 20.”
Beloit ends the season with a 24-2 record, and was led by Payton Vetter with 19, followed by Bailey Vetter with 13.
