Published: March 20, 2014
West Bend resident on point for St. Mary’s Springs
Liz Bohn taking on starting role
By NICHOLAS DETTMANN
Daily News
Blending cross-country with basketball has been beneficial
for Liz Bohn and the St. Mary’s Springs girls basketball team.
Bohn is in her first full season as the starting point guard
for the Ledgers, which will make its first girls basketball state tournament
appearance in more than 15 years tonight at the Resch Center in Ashwaubenon.
Bohn grew up in Kewaskum, but lives in West Bend, while
she’s in her junior year at Springs in Fond du Lac.
“Her quickness brought another dimension to our team,
offensively and defensively,” Springs coach Mitch Redig said. “She’s also
progressed in shooting the basketball.”
Springs (22-3) will play Algoma (24-2) at 6:35 p.m. today in
a WIAA Division 4 state semifinal. The Ledgers have won seven in a row,
including a 55-46 victory in Saturday’s sectional final over Dominican, going
into the state tournament.
“As of right now, I’m really excited, but before tip-off
I’ll be nervous,” Bohn said.
Bohn grew up playing basketball.
“It’s something I always enjoyed,” she said.
She didn’t pick up running until she was in eighth grade at
Kewaskum Middle School. The year went OK. She didn’t know what to expect as she
wasn’t much of a runner growing up, at least competitively.
When she got to Springs, she started to run more and quickly
blossomed into a top-level runner. She is a state qualifier in cross-country
and a state champion in track and field.
She was on the state record-breaking 3,200-meter relay team
in Division 3 at the track and field meet the last two years.
At last fall’s state cross-country championship meet, she
finished fifth. “I never thought I’d be such a good runner,” Bohn said.
Running the longer distances more often has upped her
endurance, which, in turn, has increased her quickness and that’s where she’s
been an asset for the Ledgers.
She was moved up to varsity midway through last season as a
sophomore and got playing time at point guard. She was selected honorable
mention All-Flyway Conference.
In 2012, she was the Flyway Conference’s Girls Runner of the
Year in cross-country.
“She’s one of our primary ball handlers,” Redig said. “She
plays really good defense; she’s very quick defensively.”
Becoming the starting point guard had its challenges.
“I had to learn all the plays,” Bohn said about the
transition into the starting role. “Last year, I just went along with it. This
year I had to be a leader and step up on offense.”
“It was a work in progress at first,” she added. “It was
something I needed to do.”
Bohn averages 5.1 points per game, which is fourth on the
team. She has played in 23 of the Ledgers’ 25 games, starting 21 of them. She
is second on the team in 3-point field goal percentage (31.2), steals (38) and
assists (56), and has a 1.24 assist-to-turnover ratio.
“I think it’s been a pretty smooth transition,” Redig said
of Bohn becoming the starting point guard. “She was playing a lot of minutes at
the point guard last season.
“She does a nice job running the offense, especially in the
second half of the season taking control of the offense and limiting the
turnovers.”
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