HUTCHINSON – The start of Saturday’s Class 4A girls’ state championship basketball game didn’t quite go exactly how Hayden coach Carvel Reynoldson anticipated.
 
A set play on the opening tip? Didn’t happen.
 
The combination of defenses he planned to use against Bishop Miege early? Nope.
 
Pretty much all of Reynoldson’s best laid plans went out the door. But in the best possible way for the Wildcats.
 
Still riding the high of a last-minute victory of defending Class 4A state champion Wellington in Thursday’s semifinals, Hayden opened the title game with a 10-0 burst that not only wiped out the Wildcats’ pre-game intentions but pretty much wiped out Miege’s hopes of adding to its state-record title collection.
 
Even though the 25-time champion Stags fought back to have a chance to tie the game in the final 30 seconds, they never fully recovered from Hayden’s early onslaught and the Wildcats held on for a 57-52 victory at the Hutchinson Sports Arena.
 
“You can never expect to get a start like that,” Reynoldson said. “But I did expect to win. We didn’t ever not want to be the aggressor today. We talked about Miege and knew everything about them. But this was about us. If we did our thing, we were going to fine.”
 

 
After taking third each of the past two seasons – in Class 3A in 2024 and in Class 4A last year – Hayden captured its first state championship since 2004, finishing the season with a 22-6 record. Miege (19-9) finished as state runner-up for the second straight year.
 
“We were for sure looking forward to the challenge,” Walter said. “I knew that this was the moment and we had to shine bright and win.”
 
Going into the game, Reynoldson had designs for how his team would combat Miege literally from the opening tip. 
 
“They always run a tip play to get an easy basket for (Mary) Grant,” he said. “You saw that in the semifinal, that’s how they started. So we ran the exact same play against them. Basically one of these teams was going to get it. It turned out nobody got it because the tip was kind of a stalemate.”
 
While Hayden didn’t get that score right off the tip, what they got was even better. Blakely Walter connected on a 3-pointer 29 seconds into the game that immediately energized the Wildcats at both ends of the court.
 
Miege tried to counter with quick shots from beyond the arc, not giving Hayden much time to really set up in any of the defenses Reynoldson said he planned to use. As all of those shots missed, Hayden took advantage at the other end.
 
Hailey Schmidtlein scored on a putback and outside jumper and Ella Foster buried her only shot of the game, a 3-pointer from virtually the exact same spot as Walter’s, as Hayden roared to a 10-0 lead. By the end of the quarter, it was a 14-2 Hayden lead.
 
“Hitting a three on the first possession was really big,” Reynoldson said. “I thought we had a great defensive plan. We planned on running four different defenses in the first four minutes to try to keep them off balance. I don’t think we got to one of them in the first four minutes.”
 

 
It mattered little as whatever defense Hayden did throw at Miege in that first quarter worked perhaps even better than the Wildcats could have anticipated. The Stags not only missed their first three 3-pointers during Hayden’s big opening run, they never really found the mark from beyond the arc for the entire game.
 
Miege went 0 of 7 from 3-point range in the first quarter and finished the game just 5 of 26 (19.2%) after going 8 of 19 from deep in its semifinal win over Rock Creek. Overall, the Stags hit 21 of 61 shots, going 1 of 13 in the first quarter with a Grant jumper at the 3:39 mark of the quarter their lone points of the period.
 
“It was a little frustrating that we got some looks that were pretty open and we didn’t convert,” Miege coach Mike Allen said. “We had some defensive breakdowns too that caused them to look better than they probably are.”
 
Anybody that’s followed Hayden knows that Schmidtlein was better than she had showed during the Wildcats’ first two state tournament games. The talented sophomore scored 14 in the quarterfinal win over Andale and 10 in the semifinal win over Wellington.
 
But she also was a combined 9 of 35 from the floor in those games and felt she hadn’t performed to her expectations.
 
“You can’t expect to have your best game every game, and having teammates that can step up and have great games, like Soph’s shot at the end, it’s incredible,” Schmidtlein said, referring to Sophia Wichman’s late 3-pointer to beat Wellington. “Having teammates like that is why people win state championships. It’s why people have so much heart and have moments like these.
 
“I think I owed my team a good game. The last two games weren’t my best but I owed them one. I knew I had to come out and play my best.”
 
She completely took over the title game in the second quarter. With Miege finally getting a little bit of offensive rhythm, Schmidtlein prevented the Stags from making any headway, scoring 10 of her 14 first-half points in the quarter as Hayden extended their lead to 29-14 by halftime.
 

 
Schmidtlein finished the game with 24 points, hitting 11 of 18 shots from the floor, also adding 11 rebounds and 4 blocked shots.
 
“It doesn’t surprise me,” Reynoldson said. “I’m going to take credit for it. I told her before the semifinal, ‘You’re going to go off today.’ After the game was over, I said, ‘I was off by one game.’ She was awesome. I say this all the time, it’s not her talent. It’s not her athleticism. It’s the person she is. She does all the right things all the time.”
 
As important as her offensive performance was, the argument could be made that her defensive work was just as key. With Hayden running a mixture of defenses, the six-footer often found herself guarding Grant, Miege’s lightning-quick point guard.
 

 
On the flip side of that, Blakely, all 5-foot-9 of her, often was matched up with Miege’s 6-foot-1 standout post Jayla McClinton. 
 
“I just tried to get around her, keep my arms up and keep my hands in her face and not let her see,” Walter said. “It was tough. She kept pushing and pushing and I just kept trying to get around her and try my hardest.”
 
“The reason why we thought Blakely would be good at that is nothing fazes her,” Reynoldson said. “It’s uncomfortable to stand face-to-face with somebody possession after possession and be a nuisance. But she put her ego aside and faced up and tried to be a pest and that’s what we asked her to do.”
 
Those combinations plus others that saw Foster and Alana Mitchell take turns on Grant and senior post Kadence Watts battle McClinton worked to near perfection. McClinton did finish with 20 points and Grant ended with 19 but the duo had just a combined nine points in the opening half and were frustrated for most of the game.
 
“We were throwing so many defenses on them and that’s why we got up early,” Schmidtlein said. “We were throwing zones, mans, so many different looks that they couldn’t figure out what to do. We were so intense and locked in.”
 
McClinton and Grant did combine for seven straight points to start the second half as Miege cut Hayden’s 15-point lead nearly in half in the first two-plus minutes. Hayden withstood that surge and restored a 14-point lead by the end of the period with Schmidtlein scoring at the buzzer.
 
The Wildcats went up 17 on a 3-pointer by Lauren Borjon to start the fourth and still led by 16 with 4:57 left before Miege put together a furious frenzy. Down 13 with just under three minutes to play, the Stags got six straight points from McClinton and three straight from Grant for a 9-0 run to make it a four-point game.
 
Sophia Wichman – the hero in the semifinal win over Wellington – hit 1 of 2 free throws with 1:10 left to put Hayden back up 5, but McClinton scored on a putback with 52 seconds left to cut the deficit to three and after Foster went 0 of 2 at the line with 48 seconds to go, Miege had a chance to tie.
 
And the Stags got a great look from Finley Lemay on the left wing, but her shot was off the mark and Foster corralled the long rebound and hit Schmidtlein for a fast-break layup that clinched the title.
 
“We just kept putting pressure on them and kept pushing and pushing and we didn’t stop,” Walter said. “And when they went on that run, we knew we had to do something. Coach told us in the locker room they were going to make a run and we had to respond to them. That’s what we did, we came together in a huddle during a time out and regrouped and said, ‘We can do this.’ We did what we needed to do and that’s how we finished.”
 
“It was incredible,” Schmidtlein said. “We started out so well. Our defense has been incredible all year and holy smokes, that was some great defense. We played amazing and that was a big part of it. Keeping that energy up after we got those first points and not letting up and letting them get back in the game. They did have a great start to the second half and they’re a great team and we knew they’d go on a run. We came right back at them.”
 

 
For the second straight game, Hayden got great offensive production from its bench as Borjon hit two 3-pointers and scored eight while Wichman and Mitchell combined for nine. And Reynoldson was quick to credit that group, along with Emberly Connell, for keying the state title run.
 
“One of the things that helps us is how deep we are,” he said. “Our plan against Wellington was to wear them out. Let’s get into them and knowing how well that worked it was easy to feel like Miege was as deep as us either. They have outstanding players but they weren’t as deep as us and that gave us confidence we could go out and pressure them.
 
“Those girls that have given us sparks off the bench are going to be so ready next year. They’re hungry and extremely talented and I believe that’s why we won this year, because our bench is so good.”
 

 
CLASS 4A GIRLS CHAMPIONSHIP GAME
 
HAYDEN 57, BISHOP MIEGE 52
 
Bishop Miege … 2 … 12 … 15 … 23 … -- … 52
Hayden … 14 … 15 … 14 … 14 … -- … 57
 
Bishop Miege (19-9) – Lemay 2-13 0-0 6, Singleton 1-6 0-0 2, Grant 7-19 3-3 19, McClinton 9-13 2-4 20, Erskine 0-0 0-0 0, Switzer 0-0 0-0 0, Calderon 1-6 0-0 3, Maher 0-1 0-0 0, Schleicher 1-3 0-2 0. Totals 21-61 5-9 52.
 
Hayden (22-6) – Walter 3-10 1-1 8, Schmidtlein 11-18 1-2 24, Foster 1-1 0-2 3, Huscher 0-0 0-0 0, Watts 1-3 2-2 5, Wichman 2-5 2-4 6, Borjon 3-4 0-0 8, Mitchell 1-4 1-1 3, Connell 0-3 0-0 0. Totals 22-48 7-12 57.
 
3-point goals – Miege 5-26 (Lemay 2-8, Grant 2-8, Calderon 1-5, Singleton 0-4, Maher 0-1); Hayden 6-9 (Borjon 2-3, Schmidtlein 1-2, Walter 1-1, Foster 1-1, Watts 1-1, Connell 0-1). Rebounds – Miege 38 (McClinton 13); Hayden 31 (Schmidtlein 11). Assists – Miege 11 (Lemay 4, Grant 4); Hayden 13 (Walter 3, Watts 3). Turnovers – Miege 13, Hayden 17. Total fouls -- Miege 17, Hayden 9. Fouled out – none.