Boys Basketball

Spring Valley was the lone team to make it out of their Regional bracket in the county. Because of the weather, they had to play three games in three days to do it, but they did not let it affect them. Spring Valley also got it done in dominant fashion, beating South Shore 86-27, Clayton 62-45 and Frederic 52-31. The Cardinals will now play top-seeded Turtle Lake in the Sectional semifinals at Chetek-Weyerhaeuser on Thursday.

Coming out of a bye, River Falls lost 67-65 at home to be knocked out of the playoffs against New Richmond. A chance to win it for the Wildcats rimmed out to end a heartbreaker.

Ellsworth had a bye in the opening round as a No. 4 seed and hosted No. 5 Amery. Ellsworth won a pair of thrillers over Amery in the regular season, but the Panthers were no match this time around in a 68-44 loss.

Prescott had a bye as a No. 1 seed in the playoffs, dominating a team that gave them trouble in Baldwin-Woodville 65-39. The Cardinals then took on the Amery team that toppled Ellsworth and had the same fate, losing 47-46 after a missed buzzer-beater to win it.

Elmwood/Plum City nearly took to the road and conquered their opening playoff matchup, but Blair-Taylor was just barely too much to overcome in a 79-78 battle for the ages. Lucas Glaus scored 28 on the night and Logan Auth had 21 of his own.

Gymnastics

River Falls finished seventh as a team at State over the weekend with a score of 133.983. The Wildcats posted 35.950 on floor, 34.633 on vault, 31.783 on beam and 31.617 on bars. Individually, Ruby Amundson took sixth all-around with a third-place bars finish, eighth-place beam finish and ninth-place floor finish.

Spring Sports

Spring sports are right around the corner with many of the start dates less than a month away.

Track and field gets off to the earliest start of the spring sports season, and all the county’s schools compete in the sport. Ellsworth and Prescott are the first of the squads to compete, opening with a March 21 event at UWRF.

Softball and baseball are also right around the corner, with softball games starting the final week of March and baseball debuting the first week of April.

Boys golf gets a bit of a later start, with River Falls’ first event April 9 at Hudson and Prescott’s April 14 at Hastings. Ellsworth and Spring Valley are also expected to begin around that range. Boys tennis also has its first events in the second week of April with Ellsworth and River Falls competing.

River Falls’ girls soccer takes the field at Baldwin-Woodville for a season opener April 3.