THE BEAR FACTS
FEBRUARY 25, 2023


Good morning! I’m Thadd Kollasch!

I’m Gavin Swift!

And I’m Joey Doerning! Welcome to the “Bear Facts”, where we’re doing some celebrating here at Bishop Garrigan High School.

Four straight years! It took half of Garrigan’s history before the Golden Bear girls basketball team made it to state for the first time, but now they’ve made it to state four years in a row. Because of weather the girls had to wait an extra day for the regional finals. They played an exciting game against Riceville and ended up with a decisive win to punch their ticket to play at Wells—Fargo Arena in Des Moines.

Bishop Garrigan outscored Riceville in all four quarters—winning 21 to 8 in the first, 15 to 12 in the second, 24 to 15 in the third, and 16 to 6 in the fourth quarter. Audi Crooks, Molly Joyce, and Abbie Capesius all scored in double digits on the way to a 76 – 41 continuous clock victory. Every Golden Bear player got into the game, and many contributed points, assists, or rebounds.

The Bears now have a 23 – 1 record. That’s the best record in Class 1-A, and it gives them the #1 seed at state. The girls’ opening game in Des Moines will be Wednesday at 1:30pm against Martinsdale—St. Mary’s. If they win the opener they’ll play in the semifinals at 1:30 on Friday, and we’re crossing our fingers that they’ll be back in the 1-A state championship game next Saturday night.

All seats at state are general admission, and including service fees tickets cost $11.50 each. There are links on the Bishop Garrigan websites and Facebook page to avoid the lines and purchase tickets in advance. We hope to see a big crowd down in Des Moines to cheer the Golden Bears on to victory!

There’s lots of other competition happening between now and the state tournament. Today the Golden Bear speech team is up in Milford for the district individual speech contest. While it’s a high school event, district contest is being held at Okoboji Middle School. Bishop Garrigan’s entries include three students in Spontaneous Speaking—Violet Bode, Brooke Ludwig, and Sam Plathe. There are also two Improvisation entries—Gavin Swift and Benjy Trainer.

Thadd Kollasch and Tate Foertsch are both in the Radio News Announcing category. You might have heard them on last week’s “Bear Facts”. Molly Peterson is entered in Reviewing, and Brooke Ludwig is competing in Expository Address. Lauren Swift is in the Poetry category, Savannah Waechter is in Literary Program; and Savannah joins Violet Bode and Benjy Trainer in the Prose category. Best wishes to Coach David Burrow and all the individual speech competitors.

As soon as speech is over, several students will leave for the state DECA conference in Des Moines. In addition to meetings, they’ll be competing with presentations in different business-related fields. The DECA group at Garrigan includes Sam Plathe, Molly Peterson, Violet Bode, Brendan Plathe, Sacha Alesch, Emmi Bartolo, and Ben Greteman.

Other DECA members are Sam Greteman, Ava Hough, Kyra Deike, Reece Kemna, Brooke Ludwig, Daniel Meis, Ella Schaaf, Zach Warren, and Hailee Reutzel. Rounding out the group are Ava Roethler, Haley Nemmers, Logan Nemmers, Thadd Kollasch, Aubrey Meyer, and Zoe Montag. Good luck to everyone involved in DECA!

Last Saturday senior Gavin Swift and sophomore Scott Bormann competed in the Iowa Quiz Bowl League Winter Open Tournament down in Ankeny. They played seven games. Most were very close, and one of them was a big win over Ankeny. Overall the Bears finished in fourth place in their division. Congratulations, quiz bowl!

Right after state basketball is over twelve Garrigan seniors will be heading down to Mississippi to do service work at two Franciscan missions there. Joey Doerning, Gavin Swift, Audi Crooks, Matt Kollasch, Avery Berte, Nate Bronk, Maggie Vaske, Drew Casey, Darius Goche, Garrett Heying, Eva Snyder, and Ali Lallier are all making the trip. They’ll be leaving Garrigan at 3pm next Sunday, and they’ll return on Friday, March 10.

Our Senior Spotlight this week shines on Darius Goche. Here to tell you about her is Violet Bode.

Darius Goche comes to Garrigan from the Bancroft area. Like a lot of people from there, her biggest activity is probably softball. Her favorite class is probably art, and some of her work has been honored in the conference art show. Darius will be off to college next year, and we wish her all the best in the future.

Thanks, Violet. On our Golden Bear calendar, there’s the district speech contest today at Okoboji Middle School in Milford. Tomorrow and Monday is the state DECA conference in Des Moines.

Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday of next week Garrigan will be hosting a series of meetings for parents with information on the Monsigneur Lafferty Fund and the new educational savings accounts that the state recently approved. You can contact Garrigan president Lynn Miller for more information on those.

We’ll have a student mass on Tuesday. Then Wednesday the girls basketball team will be off to Des Moines for the state tournament. The opening game will be at 1:30 Wednesday afternoon against Martensdale—St. Mary’s.

There’s parish busing scheduled for Garrigan next Friday, but we’re hoping the Bears will be playing in the state semi-finals that afternoon. The state championship game would be next Saturday night at 7:30.

That’s the “Bear Facts” for February. Thanks for joining us, and be sure to tune in next week for more news from Bishop Garrigan High School!

EVERYONE: GO BEARS!