After his Wellsville-Middletown girls basketball team lost 56-50 to the Community R-6 Trojans in the Class 1, District 10 championship game on Feb. 25 at Madison High School, coach Todd Cripe gave his team an encouraging pep talk in the locker room.

“I said just remember how you feel now,” Cripe said. “Remember the hurt. Don’t think about the game or what happened in the game. Think about the hurt after the game and the outcome.”

The Tigers fell in the district championship game for the second year in a row. Last year, they made their first trip to the district finals in 21 years, but lost to Pilot Grove.

W-M finished its season at 16-11, surpassing last year’s win total of 11. The Tigers will lose only two players to graduation, Natalie Boeckelman and Carly Henderson, but will bring back juniors Bethany Slovensky, Jenelle Boeckelman and Meagan Cripe, sophomores Hallie Guzy, Indica Scott and Keigan Hall and freshman Helanea McKenzie next year.

“We return a lot of girls on next year’s team,” Cripe said. “We’re going to miss Carly and Natalie dearly, but we return a pretty good core of girls back next year.”

W-M also lost to Community R-6 for the second time this season. Three months ago, the Tigers began their season with a 45-30 loss to the Trojans on the road.

“It was a far cry from the 15-point loss we took at the beginning of the year, so you could really see the improvement that the girls made throughout the year,” Cripe said. “That was exciting. It was a very good district championship game. We came up on the short end. Throughout the whole game, it was a one or two possession game. It could have gone either way, but they made enough plays at the end to get the win.”

The Tigers, who were seeded second in the tournament, led 11-6 after the first quarter and 27-26 at halftime before Community, the top seed, rallied to take a 42-37 lead after three quarters.

“We got into some foul trouble,” Cripe said. “We had to do some mixing and matching. Some girls had to sit for a little bit more than they normally would. I thought it was a great team effort in the first half to get where we were at.”

W-M came back to get within two points, 52-50, with a minute and a half left in the game, before Community held on to improve to 22-5 and win its eighth district title in 10 years.

“We didn’t execute in the last minute and a half with the ball in our hands,” Cripe said. “It is what it is. But I was super proud of my girls with the effort they put in. R-6 is a very good ballclub. They’re well coached. Coach (Bob) Curtis does a great job with those girls. We were excited about being able to compete and I thought we did that. The girls put a lot into it.”

The Tigers began district play on Feb. 23 with a 67-41 win over Higbee in the semifinals. In that contest, Guzy scored 17 points and Slovensky finished with 16.

Against the Trojans, Hall led the Tigers with 11 points and 12 rebounds.

“Keigan really did a nice job rebounding today,” Cripe said. “She had a lot of nice looks around the rim.”

Also for W-M, Jenelle Boeckelman finished with 11 points and Slovensky added nine.

The W-M boys team, which finished fourth in last year’s Class 1 state tournament, lost to Cairo 72-44 in a Class 2, District 5 quarterfinal on Feb. 20 at Sturgeon. The Tigers finished their season at 9-16.