Girls Basketball: Yorkville downs Rosary to advance

Yorkville’s girls basketball program hasn’t won a regional title in 10 years.

Senior Ali Hester and the Foxes made sure that they would get a shot at the elusive title Thursday.

Yorkville cruised past Rosary, the team that knocked the Foxes out of the postseason in 2011, 51-33 in Wednesday’s Yorkville Class 3A Regional semifinal. That sends the Foxes into Thursday’s 7:30 p.m. title game against Northern Illinois Big 12 East rival Kaneland. The two teams split during the regular season.

“I can’t say enough about Ali Hester,” Yorkville coach Luke Engelhardt said. “She took a knee to the thigh and about a minute later, she was begging to get back into the game. That was the only minute she came out of the game. She got us started offensively in the first quarter. She was everywhere.”

Hester scored all seven of the Foxes’ points in the first quarter. She then scored seven more during a 12-1 run in the second quarter, the other five points coming from junior Paige Beach, as Yorkville (20-6) hopped out to a 19-9 lead.

Rosary (9-18) cut the lead to 19-14 on five consecutive points from Karly Tate, and sliced the lead to 22-18 with 1:15 left in the half, but that’s the closest the Royals could get the rest of the night.

Yorkville turned up the heat defensively in the second half to pull away. The Foxes forced 28 turnovers in the win, with Jordan Dhuse coming up with seven steals and Hester collecting four steals.

“I think once one person on our team starts going, it gets everybody else fired up,” Hester said. “It’s really exciting.”

Tate paced Rosary with 10 points and nine rebounds in the loss.

“It’s the story of our season,” Rosary coach Dave Beebe said. “We’re all over the place. You can’t really figure us out. We had more than a week to prepare for them, and it just didn’t seem to pan out. We were ready for them. They’re a good team. It should be a really good game Thursday.”

Hester led all scorers with 17 points for Yorkville, which also got 10 points apiece from Beach and Dhuse.

Kaneland beat Yorkville by 20 points in Yorkville the first time around this season, but the Foxes responded with a three-point road win as part of their current nine-game winning streak.

“I think it will be an evenly matched game,” Engelhardt said. “They have a lot of talent. That’s why they’re the No. 1 seed. They have a very balanced team. They will come out gunning for us since we beat them the last time we played them. I couldn’t be happier to be playing on this court for a championship against them.”

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