CLASS AA FINALS: Edgewood girls complete perfect season with title win

Jaylyn Strength tries to shake a defender in the Class AA state championship game, won by Edgewood Academy on Friday. (Tim Gayle)

By TIM GAYLE

Twenty-six wins had set up the Edgewood girls’ basketball team for this day, but Friday didn’t seem any different to the players.

“Waking up this morning, it just felt like just another day,” junior guard Lindsey Brown said. “We keep winning games and keep winning games. We treated it as just another game. It wasn’t as a state championship game, it was just another game and I feel that’s what helped us win because we were mature about it. We weren’t too overhyped.”

Edgewood put the finishing touches on a masterpiece of a season, throttling Lakeside 59-36 to finish 27-0 and win the Alabama Independent School Association’s Class AA state championship on Friday at the Multiplex at Cramton Bowl.

“Going undefeated is ridiculously hard,” Edgewood coach Darryl Free said. “You always have an ‘X’ on your back. They won it last year. They graduated three seniors that contributed, so we had to fill some pieces. We challenged the girls that didn’t have quite as big a role last year to fill those shoes. I think they filled them and exceeded it.”

And while those smaller roles were vitally important, the formula that Jason Fisher employed last year in a 24-6 season capped by a championship win over Sparta Academy was the same one used by Free on Friday -- a strong inside presence from forward Madison Martin, a steady performance by Jaylyn Strength, one of only three seniors on the team, and Brown’s ability to take over a game as she did after Lakeside had cut the lead to eight points late in the third quarter.

Lakeside’s Hall of Fame coach, Ricky Ward, won plenty of state championships with the Chiefs before coaching several years in Georgia, then at Abbeville Christian before returning to Lakeside this year. When asked what makes Edgewood that type of championship-caliber team, he pointed to a mindset where the players “refuse to lose” and a standout coaching staff.

And while the Chiefs had a modest 13-10 record this season, Ward said he was pleased with the way the players accepted a change in the team’s mindset.

“They played together, good enough to have a state championship team,” Ward said of his players. “If you don’t capitalize on every single opportunity …. they just had more runs than we did, they had a whole lot less turnovers then we did. I think they (Lakeside players) have jump-started the program. We’ve played in state championships, in my whole career, 22 times. We won 10 of them, which sounds great, but we lost 12. That’s how hard it is to win the thing.”

Lakeside senior Jayden Green said the Chiefs started turning the corner late in the season toward building back a championship program.

“I think, from the start, we were happy to get Coach Ricky back because of the legacy he has at Lakeside,” Green said. “It brought a good spirit to the team this year, just to have someone who trusted in us and trusted in our ability.”

And that helped Lakeside rally from an embarrassing 27-9 halftime deficit after the Chiefs failed to score a point in the second quarter. Lakeside trimmed the deficit to eight points late in the third quarter before Brown scored nine points in a 13-0 run that put the Wildcats back in control.

“We knew they were going to come out with some different wrinkles in the second half and they hit us with a good punch in the third quarter,” Free said. “We called timeout and went over a couple of things. It was basically a mindset challenge for our girls. They accepted the challenge and went back out there with a run of their own.”

That’s what championship programs do, Green pointed out.

“They’ve been here before,” she said. “We haven’t. I think we were ready after halftime but one small thing would happen and it got in our heads.”

And while Friday afternoon capped a historic day for the Edgewood girls’ basketball program, Free said he offered no pregame speeches on what was at stake.

“This is the most unique group I’ve ever coached in my career,” Free said. “They’re the loosest, loving, carefree group I’ve ever had. I feel like if I push too hard with them, they’ll think too much. I just want to let these two (Brown and Strength) lead us. The team takes on their personality. It’s been the most unique experience I’ve had because a lot of times I have to sit back and say, ‘OK, be goofy, be carefree’ because that’s who they are.”

In the end, they followed the same formula they used in the first 26 games as Brown finished with 24 points, Strength had 16 and Martin had 10.

“We came into today just like any other day because it was a business trip,” Strength said. “We came here to take care of business. It feels really good to know that we went undefeated and I’m on the first team in Edgewood history to go undefeated and win a state championship back to back. We knew it was going to be hard to come back and win for the second year but everyone stepped up and everyone played their role.”