SESM The Class A Champion

No. 2 Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s scored the first 14 points of the game and earned its first Minnesota State High School League Girls Basketball state championship with a wire-to-wire 80-63 victory over top-seeded Mountain Iron-Buhl in the 2026 Class A title game on Saturday, March 14 at the University of Minnesota’s Williams Arena.

Knights Morgan Mathiowetz opened the scoring with a three-pointer and buried another triple during the opening flourish. Multiple first-half Mountain Iron-Buhl first-half timeouts couldn’t stop the onslaught. The Knights (32-1) led 42-16 at the half and were up by as many as 28 points. In what was a competitive Class A tournament, this was a scenario neither side could have seen coming.

“We’ve had a lot of strong first halves all year,” Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s 37th-year head coach Bruce Woitas said. “So I think once that gets going, it’s a benefit to us. But in a state championship game, I would say, no, we didn’t expect that. Credit to the way we played defense in the first half.”

The Rangers rallied to within 10 in the second half but the early hole was too much to overcome.

Mathiowetz thought the team, “Left it all out on the court and we knew that if we did everything that we could and played the basketball that we know how to play we could come out (victorious) in the end.”

Mathiowetz finished the tournament with an even 100 points, tallying a game-high 27 in the final. Schieffert was her offensive costar on Saturday, adding 25 points on 10-for-16 shooting. Both represented the Knights on the TruStone Financial Credit Union All-Tournament Team.