MISSOULA — Last year, the Missoula Loyola Breakers made a run to the State B championship game. Now again this year, with playoff time officially here, they're looking to make another run as one of the top teams in the Western B.
Loyola begins district play on Friday as the top team in 6B. They'll take on Darby at 10 a.m. in Anaconda with a shot at Saturday's district title game.
With postseason now here, it's win or go home every step of the way.
"I tell them all the time it's all practice until tournament time," Loyola coach Aaron Ward said. "Once you get there every game we got to raise the bar a little bit, and every tournament you advance to there's a little more weight on it. So you kind of see how strong of a team you are."
Loyola — which ended the regular season ranked No. 6 in the MontanaSports.com Top-10 rankings — is 14-3 this season and the Breakers are beginning to hit their peak at the perfect time.
"I think we have a mentality of just never being satisfied with where we are," Loyola senior guard Drew Lamb said. "Like always knowing that we have more room to grow and knowing that we have more potential, and we just want to fill that potential to its maximum and I would say we saw that a lot last year at state tournament as well.
"We just kept pushing and pushing and pushing and that's what led us to our success."
The Breakers made it to last year's Class B state title game, where they fell to Baker.
After losing a pair of impactful seniors, Loyola came back this season led by three-year starters in Lamb and Addie Nault, two of the team's five seniors. The other seniors include Amalee Schneider, Catherine Hart and Sylvie VonDoersten.
It's a tight-knit group that spent a lot of time together on and off court in the summer, and is seeing it pay off.
"Just be able to see young girls be able to come in and help us, and then like me to be able to help them get varsity time and just trust that they're there for a reason that we need them and doesn't really matter with age," Nault said.
"It's just like as long as we all come together and play together, we're a successful team."
Plus, Loyola is seeing the breakout of one of the state's new stars in sophomore Spencer Laird who leads the state in scoring, and is already a highly-recruited Division I talent.
But more importantly, Laird has gelled perfectly with those around her to compliment the Breakers' squad. Laird already holds offers from Montana and Montana State with more likely to come.
"She's amazing. Even though she's young, she's such a leader," Nault said of her teammate. "She's going to tell you, hey, keep shooting, you got the next one. Keep talking to me if you want me to make adjustments as a post. Just tell me and I'll be there.
"And that's just a nice to be able to just talk to her and realize that she wants the best for me. I want the best for her."
That cohesiveness has mixed the veterans with the the younger players well. Laird's sister, Emme, has also been a big contributor as an eighth-grader, plus freshman Amya Lindauer, juniors Caitrin Harrington and Sammy McHugh, sophomore Charlotte Ward and freshman Haley Richardson round out the rest of the varsity squad.
The Breakers are hoping it results in another deep March run, as they soak up every moment, together.
"I would say I saw it a lot happening during the Florence game (on Saturday) is we're celebrating each other on the court, you know, flexing, chest bump and all this stuff and just little stuff like that," Lamb said. "You make a lot of memories, have a lot of fun, but you're also having a lot of success as well."
