DICKINSON – It’s a shame when the boys and girls part ways, especially at the end of basketball season.
Dickinson High School’s respective programs parted ways on Friday, with a pair of home games that brought fans to their feet in the opener and brought tears from the nightcap. The girls will move on to play Century on Thursday, after outlasting the Turtle Mountain/Belcourt Bravettes, 60-54, while the boys succumbed to Williston for the second time in less than two weeks in a 62-48 defeat and ended their season at 9-13, 8-12.
Both games were hosted at the Dickinson High School gymnasium, and in the opener the girls started off the game with a bang on a 6-2 run in the first half. Belcourt clawed back with a 6-2 run of their own, but from there the Midgets were off to the races, despite five lead changes and three ties in the first few minutes of the first half.
DHS girls versus TMCHS PHOTO GALLERY
Midget standout Abbey Dutke drained a 3-pointer to open the run, and DHS went on to build a 30-19 lead with only 1:50 remaining in the opening period. Sadie Stevenson paced the Midgets with 8 points in the first half and Dutke completed a 3-point-play to end up with six.
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The Midgets also were set back by an injury to senior guard Caton Pearcy at the 5:44 mark in the first half that seemed serious. Pearcy said after the game that it appears to be a sprain, and that she could be ready for Thursday’s game against Bismarck Century – the #1-ranked team in the state – on Thursday.
“Caton going out in the first half didn’t help us at all,” Dickinson head coach Devan Douglas said. “But I think she’ll be OK. She’s tough kid. But we had a lot of younger girls play tonight and it’s the first time they’ve ever been in a big game like this and I thought they did a really good job.”
While the two teams traded shots from the field for DHS, and the charity stripe for Belcourt, it got a little more dicey in the second half for the Midgets, as the Bravettes came charging back with a solid end to the game. At one point, the game was closed down to a 56-52 advantage for Dickinson with only :47 remaining, but outstanding free-throw shooting from the Midgets – 9-for-14 in the second half – helped DHS to outlast Turtle Mountain on the strength of 9 second-half points from Emily Ash, and nine more from Stevenson for a total of 17. Ash ended up in double-digits for the contest with 13, while Dutke contributed 10.
“We didn’t start out that great, but then we kind of got after it,” Douglas added. “Century is the number-one team in the state right now, but they’ve had some injuries, too, and honesty with WDA (Western Dakota Association) – especially in our region – at any time it could be anybody’s night.”
A short time thereafter, the boys came into the game riding a 3-game losing streak and hoped to wash the taste of a bitter, 2-point, home loss to Williston on Feb. 14 from their memories. Instead, the Coyotes upended Dickinson, 62-48, in a game that see-sawed between starts and stops that saw the Midgets close to within 33-26 at the half and sporadically nudge the Coyotes throughout the second through solid free-throw shooting.
DHS boys basketball versus Williston Photo Gallery
That said, DHS scored only 14 points from the field in the second period to combine with 8-of-11 from the stripe. It wasn’t enough in the end to extend the Midgets’ season. Drew Biel had a team-high 14 points and Alex Dvorak ended up with 11, while Owen Bittner dropped in another 9.
DHS coach Dan Glasser said the game isn’t nearly as important as the contributions the senior class made to the school and the program, and while it didn’t end with the team advancing forward, the young men who played on it will benefit from the lessons they learned on the court and the impact their discipline and efforts will have on their lives as they head to college and elsewhere.
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“The positives are that there are five amazing men (Dvorak, Biel, Tyrese Annace, Keaton Crow and Hubert Niyimbona) that have gone through this program, and they're going to go succeed further than this basketball game," Glasser said. "That's what this program is about and that's what we accomplished."
It's the second-such class Glasser has coached through all four years, and Biel said the relationships he built with the Midgets of 2023 will last a lifetime.
"It means a lot, you know, four years of hard work and I learned everything I know from this program," Biel said. "From Dan (Glasser) from (assistant coach) Brendan (Ware), they're great guys and i love 'em."
Fellow senior Dvorak added that the team might not have reached its goals, but they were all better for the effort. Dvorak will be headed to college at the University of Mary in Bismarck in the autumn.
"I wouldn't rather go out (of the season) like this with anybody else," Dvorak said. "These are my favorite people: Teammates, friends, brothers, it doesn't get any better than this. Obviously, we didn't have the results we wanted, but i wouldn't want to go through this with anybody else."
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