Omaha Westside arrives safely to take on Lincoln East despite heavy snow between Lincoln and Omaha.
CARA PESEK / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Wednesday, February 28, 2007 6:00 pm
No cheerleaders yelled for the Omaha Westside Warriors during the first round of the girls state basketball tournament Thursday.
No pep band played the school song.
Three members of the junior varsity team — Ellie Anderson, Lauren Bradford and Chelsea Greco — cheered from the student section.
Five sets of parents and a handful of fans peppered the stands.
And for a few hours Thursday morning, it was dubious whether the No. 1-seeded team would make it to the state tournament at all.
The Warriors awoke to nearly a foot of snow in Omaha. Interstate 80 was closed.
No one was on time to the 8 a.m. shootaround at school, said junior Shelly Martin. Very quickly, it became apparent that driving the school vans probably wouldn’t be a good idea, said Westside athletic director Bob Reznicek.
Phone calls were made. Parents with SUVs were recruited. A caravan, with coach Scott Persigehl leading the way, was formed.
They took U.S. 6, and at times they couldn’t see the car behind them, said his wife, Teri Persigehl.
It took them 2 1/2 hours to make it to Lincoln.
“It was just crazy,” she said.
Nebraska School Activities Association Director Jim Tenopir had seen the weather forecast and worried Wednesday.
NSAA officials had discussed alternatives to proceeding with the tournament as planned, Tenopir said.
But they couldn’t push the tournament back a day — a rule in the organization’s constitution bans the scheduling of activities on Sundays. They couldn’t start Thursday’s games later in the day, because the last games of the day were already scheduled for 9 p.m. — which meant they’d end after 11. And with a month jam-packed with other state tournaments and activities, they couldn’t reschedule all together.
“It’s a situation where you want to do what is safest and what is soundest,” he said.
In the end, he called the teams that had planned to come to the state tournament Thursday morning and encouraged them to come down the night before instead.
Teams from Millard and Bellevue heeded his advice.
Others, like Westside, didn’t.
On Thursday morning, Tenopir’s staff gave him reports — that Holdrege’s team was near York, that Omaha Westside was near Waverly.
Some teams scheduled to play later in the day — Blue Hill, West Point Central Catholic and Homer — were unaccounted for early Thursday afternoon.
That’s not unusual, Tenopir said. Most teams don’t check in until a few hours before they’re scheduled to play.
The difference this year was that the NSAA had reason to worry about them.
It was at 12:30 p.m. — just an hour before their game was set to begin — that the six SUVs carrying the Westside team and coaches arrived at the Bob Devaney Sports Center, thus ending speculation that the Warriors would be the first team in the history of the girls state basketball tournament to forfeit a game.
The Warriors played Lincoln East, which had a full student section, a pep band, a dance team and a cheerleading squad to cheer them on.
The fourth quarter ended in a 57-57 tie.
But the Warriors won 74-66 in overtime.
The three students in the student section went wild.
Getting to Lincoln might have been dangerous, said Ellie Anderson, but it also made the game more exciting.
“It’s kind of like a sports movie.”
Reach Cara Pesek at 473-7361 or cpesek@journalstar.com.