Brian Roebke photos
Wrightstown basketball fans cheer during Friday’s WIAA Boys Basketball State Tournament held at the Menominee Nation Arena in Oshkosh. The Tigers lost the game but gave the state champs a good game.
By Brian Roebke
Editor
It’s always a great accomplishment for a school to qualify for a state tournament, and none of them in Wisconsin have the same history as the WIAA Boys Basketball State Tournament.
The Wrightstown Tigers competed in this tournament for the first time on Friday morning, held at the Menominee Nation Arena in Oshkosh instead of the Kohl Center in Madison because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the team made the community proud.
The Tigers (24-5) lost 53-44 to the No. 1 seeded Racine St. Catherine Angels (28-1), who won the state title on Friday night with a 68-49 victory over Lake Country Lutheran.
Although the highly unusual and historic season ended, the arena was filled with 593 Wrightstown fans proudly wearing blue and cheering on their upstart team.
Coach Cory Haese summed up living in Wrightstown as being spoiled.
“It’s just a wonderful community, we don’t have a McDonald’s or a Kwik Trip or stop lights, but we have each other. We have each other and it doesn’t matter what sport you’re for, it’s Wrightstown Tiger blue that’s playing at state today and it didn’t matter what sport it was, it means a lot to our community that basketball was able to do something down here that a lot of other sports have enjoyed in the past.”