With 1:04 left in the overtime period of a girls basketball exhibition game against the Youth Sports Exchange on July 7, Montgomery County junior Olivia Shaw was looking to do something she always did many times during the 2021-22 high school season – rebound.

“That’s always the goal,” Shaw said.

Shaw grabbed a rebound off of a missed 3-point shot. Then, she scored the go-ahead basket from the paint to break a 27-27 tie. The Wildcats went on to pull off a 31-27 win over YSE, a team from Belgium.

“I didn’t realize how close the game was,” said Shaw, who led the Wildcats in rebounds with 288 last year. “I just put it up and it went in. That really helped.”

Shaw was one of 18 MCHS players – 10 girls and eight boys – who participated in the MCHS girls-boys doubleheader against YSE at Ballew & Snell Court. The girls and boys played against the Belgians for the second time. They first squared off in 2019.

“That’s so crazy,” Shaw said. “They come to Montgomery, which is a small town. But I was looking forward to it. It’s fun. It’s something completely different.”

Seniors Carson Flake and Carissa Doyle, juniors Maddy Queathem, Claire Cobb, Morgan Koch and Madi Polston and sophomores Aliviah Fischer, Atlanta Kobusch and Karla Gonzalez also played for the MCHS girls team, which won 20 games and captured Eastern Missouri Conference and district titles last year.

Shaw said she was impressed with the Belgians’ aggressive style of play. They stormed to a 6-0 lead until MCHS rallied to tie the game at 25-25 after regulation.

“They’re a lot tougher than what I expected them to be,” Shaw said. “They’re a really good team. They’re really nice, but they play with intensity.”

The boys team lost 54-29 to the Belgians in the second game of the doubleheader. Seniors Alex Hartman and Zak Rodgers, junior Landon Massey, sophomores Sean Rodgers and Jay Rodgers and freshmen Chase Queathem, Adrian Combs and Jake Stellwagon were the representatives for the Wildcats, who lost four players from last year’s team that won 17 games and a district title.

“We have a really young squad with not much experience,” Hartman said. “We lost a lot of minutes from last year with that senior class gone. Our team chemistry, at this point, is higher than I have ever seen.”

MCHS boys head coach Scott Kroeger said playing against the Belgians will help prepare his squad for next winter.

“It was a really good experience for our boys,” Kroeger said. “I had a lot of kids getting some experience against some really good competition, especially with some of the guys we don’t have here. It’s really good for them to get those kinds of reps.”

The YSE basketball program is playing against teams from all over the Midwest. After the contest with the Wildcats, the Belgians visited the University of Missouri-Columbia. All of the players are staying with families in Hermann.

YSE manager Koenraad Van Herzeele said his teams enjoyed their visit to Montgomery County.

“We like it,” he said. “It’s a nice gym. They’re good teams. It’s a friendly game with good basketball.”

Three years ago, Kroeger was contacted by YSE to set up an exhibition contest with his boys team.

“They wanted to add another team to the schedule and they got a hold of me,” Kroeger said. “We made it work. That summer was the first time they ever did it with the boys.”

MCHS and YSE made plans to have a girls-boys doubleheader in 2020 and 2021, but the contest was canceled both years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hartman said he was happy to compete against the Belgians in his final high school basketball season.

“Just playing with them and hearing the way they talk was just fun,” Hartman said. “I haven’t played against that my whole life.”

The boys and girls games were played in two 20-minute halves. Each half was played under a running clock until the two-minute mark.