Winning a share of the Pioneer League title a year ago for the first time since 2019 was a pretty big deal for the Burlington girls.
 
But it also came with a bit of a bittersweet feel to it.
 
“Absolutely, it was great,” Burlington coach Erin McGown said of the shared league title with Wellsville. “But we felt like we should have won it outright last year. We let one slip and that happens. But bringing back four starters who have played a lot of experience with each other, even before their freshman year, winning league outright was absolutely a goal of ours.”
 
With a convincing performance Tuesday against a Santa Fe Trail team bidding to forge another shared league title this year, the Wildcats can check that accomplishment off the list of their goals for the 2025-26 season. A hot start from the perimeter propelled Burlington to a 33-13 halftime lead and the Wildcats never really let Trail get back into things in the second half, taking a 57-38 victory.
 
That moved Burlington to 11-0 in league play, clinching the much-desired outright league title. The Wildcats still have one league game left against Osawatomie on Friday, having beaten the Trojans 63-7 earlier this season, and have a two-game lead over Trail, which suffered its only league losses to Burlington this season.
 
“Before the season I knew they would be much improved,” McGown said of Trail, which posted just a 6-15 mark last season, but is 15-6 this season. “I thought they would be up near the top, but maybe not the one we’d be battling with at the end. But Coach (Dakota) Soderlund has done a wonderful job with them and they have played really well. Coming into tonight, we knew this wasn’t going to be a gimme game. They can score the ball and do a solid job defensively.
 
“Our girls came out ready to pay and we jumped on them. Hit some shots and defensively we played up to our potential there and had great effort and energy.”
 
The defensive end is one where McGown said her team has perhaps had a slight slide form a year ago after losing the only senior on last year’s team, Grace Birk, whom McGown called “the cornerstone of our defense.”
 
But the strides Burlington has made on the offensive end have more than made up for whatever minimal regression there’s been on defense. And not just in the Wildcats’ ability to score, because they had seven games a year ago scoring 50 or more points and finished the season averaging 45.9.
 
Instead, it’s been seeing that offensive production on a regular basis. Last year, the Wildcats also had eight games where they scored 40 or fewer points. This season, Burlington already has 16 games where they’ve scored 50 or more points and only two games of 40 or fewer.
 
“Offensive consistency has been the key,” McGown said. “Last year, I thought defensively we were as solid in the half court as they came but we would have a quarter where we’d score a bucket of long lulls. Just being able to have players step up and become more consistent and go get a bucket when we need one has really been big for us.”
 

 
Averaging 54 points per game this year, Burlington’s offense has been led by the junior duo of Mac Medlock and Alexa Splechter, who combined for 40 points in Tuesday’s win over Trail. Medlock is averaging 19.5 points per game while Splechter adds 15.5 a contest, each raising their averages by nearly 5 points per game over a year ago.
 
And while the duo has combined for 87 made 3-pointers, Medlock has also used her 5-foot-10 frame to become a bigger factor in getting points in the paint this season and Splechter has also become more aggressive in attacking the basket.
 

 
Throw in junior Karlee Docman nearly doubling her scoring average from a year ago and adding a third weapon beyond the arc with 25 made 3s and an inside presence on the glass from senior Hattie Burgio and it’s added up to an 18-3 mark for the Wildcats this season.
 
Two of those losses have come to teams ranked No. 1 in their respective classes – Class 3A Silver Lake in the championship game of the Burlington Invitational and Class 2A Eureka a week earlier, that loss by just seven points.
 
The only other loss came to Osage City on Feb. 6. The Wildcats and Indians are in the same Class 3A sub-state quadrant and right now sit as the No. 2 and 3 seed, perhaps on a collision course to meeting in a sub-state championship.
 
“We’re taking care of business in the games we should be winning,” McGown said. “As a coach, I thought we should have been more competitive in that game with Osage (a 58-40 loss). We just could never make a run at them in the second half. Eureka was a tough one, but a really fun game.
 
“There’s a chance of (seeing Osage again) and we feel like we didn’t give them our best effort. If that’s who we have to play, that’s who we have to play and I look forward to a rematch without looking past anyone we’d have to play to get to them. Our girls know each other very well, play ball together in the summer. It’ll be tough if someone has to go home from that game, if it happens. It’s a tough sub-state and just to get there will be tough.”
 

 
Despite falling short in Tuesday’s contest, Trail coach Soderlund wasn’t about to let the setback detract from what’s been a big turnaround for the Chargers this season. Trail went just 4-8 in league play a year ago in his first season as head coach and with a roster of players that hadn’t had much varsity court time as a whole.
 
This season, the Chargers returned four starters including leading scorers Addalyn Sleichter and Reese Black, each of whom are averaging just over 11 points per game this season. Transfer Paige Kibbee had been a nice addition and leads the Chargers in rebounds with 8.6 per game.
 
After a 3-2 start to the season, the Chargers have won 13 of their last 17 games with two of the losses to Burlington and the other two coming to Baldwin in overtime and Heritage Christian, which also beat them earlier in the season at the Ike Cearfoss Tournament at Central Heights.
 
“It’s been huge and it’s just a testament to their hard work last year and over the summer,” he said of the turnaround. “They’ve really bought in to our philosophy and our standards and put in the work. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but we had a really good summer and competed against good teams and that really prepared us for this season.
 
“The early success had a domino effect and once the girls got a taste of that they’ve kept the ball rolling.”
 

 
While Burlington’s girls were wrapping up the Pioneer League title on Tuesday, the Wildcat boys already had locked up its title last Friday with an 83-39 rout of Prairie View. But like the girls, the Wildcat boys have their sights set on an undefeated league title and kept that bid alive with a 73-54 win over Santa Fe Trail.
 
Coming off a 20-4 season a year ago that saw the Wildcats qualify for the Class 3A state tournament and drop a heartbreaking 45-42 loss to eventual champion Hesston, Burlington had some major holes to fill with senior Maddux Cheever the lone returning starter for the Wildcats.
 
The biggest of those holes was Sage Fefjar, who became just the third player in program history to finish top 10 in career points, rebounds, assists and steals joining former All-Stater Tyrel Reed and Mark Griffith. Burlington’s do-everything player, the Wildcats ran everything they did offensively through him.
 
This season, it’s been a different philosophy this season with the offensive load spread more evenly, but the same result with the Wildcats on the verge of a second straight undefeated league title.
 
“One of the things we talked about early in the season was that, ‘Hey, this might make us more dangerous,’” Burlington coach Justin Logan said. “Last year, yeah, we tried to play through Sage as much as we could and get him a touch on every possession. This year, it’s different. It could be Mason Collins’ night or Maddux’s night or Trey Over’s night or Gage (Navarro’s). It’s really nice how versatile we can be, being able to go to different options throughout the game.”
 
Burlington has an 18-3 overall record with its losses coming to Baldwin, Ottawa and Silver Lake – two of those teams ranked in their respective classifications. All three losses have been by less than double-digits with the loss to Silver Lake coming in overtime.
 
Burlington holds the top seed in its Class 3A sub-state quadrant.
 

 
OTHER GIRLS BASKETBALL STANDOUTS

• Silver Lake’s Kailyn Hanni set the Eagles’ single-game scoring record against Royal Valley last week, erupting for 39 points – 22 coming in the third quarter. That broke the old mark of 37 points set by Rhonda Matzke against Cimarron in 1988. Hanni hit 14 fields goals (no 3-pointers) and added 11 points at the free throw line. Earlier this season, she set the school’s career assist record and went over 1,000 career points.
• Shawnee Heights had a pair of teammates hit the 1,000-point mark in the T-Birds’ come-from-behind win over Seaman last seek. KK Emmot and Pearmella Carter both recorded their milestone point in the game and Heights used a 17-0 run in the fourth quarter to erase a deficit to start the period and win 60-42.
• Clay Center’s Lily Edwards went over the 1,000-point mark last week and now sits at 1,022 points, averaging 19 points per game this season.
• Madison is on a six-game winning streak fueled by a stingy defense. The Bulldogs have allowed just an average of 18 points per game over the last four games of that streak, including holding Southern Coffey County to just eight points. In a 54-19 win over Uniontown, Sadie Albert scored 26 points and had 8 rebounds.
• Marais des Cygnes Valley’s Emily Criqui had a big game against Cornerstone with 28 points, 6 rebounds, 6 assists and 3 steals.
• In a 61-36 win over Seaman last week that avenged an earlier loss to the Vikings, Topeka High’s Hailey Caryl had 22 points, 12 rebounds and 8 assists. Caryl was 7 of 7 at the free throw line and hit 6 of 8 shots. The Trojans also knocked off Manhattan 58-54 the next night after starting the week with a 59-47 win over Hayden.

 

 
OTHER BOYS BASKETBALL STANDOUTS

• Manhattan’s Vince Doering set the school record for steals in a season, collecting four steals in Friday’s win over Topeka High to give him 65 on the season. That broke the old school record of 63 set by Connor Brooks in 2010-11. Doering, who is averaging 3.8 steals per game this season, also scored a career-high 24 points in the Indians’ come-from-behind 58-55 win over the Trojans.
• Already having won its first-ever league titles with a sweep of the Flint Hills League regular-season and tournament titles, Cair Paravel has now won 15 straight games after sweeping Council Grove and Topeka Heritage Christian last week. The Lions are 18-2 on the season and currently the No. 1 seed in their Class 2A sub-state quadrant.
• Northern Heights’ Cooper Woodrow had 26 points, 4 steals and 4 rebounds in a 68-63 win over West Franklin last week.