West notebook: Minnehaha Academy road schedule quite smooth

Minnehaha Academy has been practicing in its gym since early November and certainly knows the floor as well as anyone, but, until playing host to Breck on Tuesday night, the Redhawks girls' basketball team had not played a home game this season.

"It's been incredible," coach Josh Thurow said. "It's not that there's been something going on with our gym. It's just the way the schedule worked out."

Included among their first 12 road games were three tournaments -- at Hudson (Wis.) over Thanksgiving break, the Monticello Holiday tournament and Saturday's Minnesota-Scores.net Showcase at Hopkins, accounting for six of their away games.

"It has definitely been a different experience," Redhawks guard Rachel Hansen said. "But I think it's worked out. We've come together as a team, and we've all gotten closer."

As evidenced by its 11-1 record, Minnehaha's life on the road has been better than even Thurow could have expected.

"We were prepared for a tough start," he said. "I would have been happy if we would have been something like 7-5 or 8-4. I never expected us to be 11-1 after this."

Tuesday's game against Breck began a five-game stretch of home games for Minnehaha Academy.

Chances are that the Minneapolis Southwest girls' Nordic ski team no longer will be able to ski under the radar.

The Lakers, who were unranked in the most recent state polls, won the prestigious Giants Ridge Invitational on Saturday, scoring 716 team points, just ahead of then-No. 1-ranked Burnsville.

"Well, the people that do the rankings look at the conference races and such as that," Southwest coach James Dundon said. "But I'm not surprised by the result. They've done all of the work they need to do to get a chance at a state championship."

The top finishers for Southwest were Rosie Frankowski, who was fourth in the Classic race, and Libby Ellis, who took third place in the Freestyle race.