Columbus boys grab fourth-straight Eastern Cloverbelt championship
Girls wrap up regular season with win
By Hub City Times staff
MARSHFIELD – The Columbus Dons boys basketball team has wrapped up its fourth-straight Eastern Cloverbelt Conference championship.
The Dons’ Bryce Fuerlinger goes up for a shot during the Feb. 13 game against Greenwood at Columbus High School. Hub City Times staff photo
The Dons cruised past the Loyal Greyhounds on Feb. 15 for a 65-31 win, which cemented another conference title for Columbus Catholic. Noah Taylor led Columbus with 19 points, Jarred Mandel scored 18, and Bryce Fuerlinger added 14.
The win came two days after Columbus defeated Greenwood 95-36 at Columbus Catholic High School in Marshfield. Fifteen Columbus players got into the game, and 13 of them scored for Dons’ Head Coach Joe Konieczny.
“I thought our players had the right approach,” he said. “We try to build good habits in a game like this. We got to play 15 players to make sure that we’re prepared for the future. At halftime we talked about the seven young men that’ll be leaving our program at the end of the season, and whether or not we want to ride their coattails, or do we want to contribute and be ready to replace them.
“I thought in the second half our young players did a really good job of contributing, treating it like an opportunity to improve and making sure that they’re working on things that we’re going to need in the future.”
The win was the 13th straight over Greenwood and the 33rd in the last 37 with the Indians dating back to 1967. Fuerlinger led Columbus with 20 points. Mandel added 16, and Ethan Meece scored 10.
Meanwhile, the Columbus Dons girls basketball team wrapped up its regular season with a Cloverbelt Conference crossover win over Cadott on Feb. 14.
The Dons won the sixth-place game 56-43 at Columbus High School, heading into a Feb. 19 playoff showdown with Tigerton in a Division 5 regional quarterfinal matchup.
Hailey Roehl scored a season-high 31 points for Columbus, surpassing the 29 she scored against Nekoosa at the Cranberry Classic in Wisconsin Rapids in November. Roehl also knocked down six 3-point field goals in the game – five of them in the first half. The win improved the Dons’ record to 12-9 on the season.
