Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s wins 1A girls basketball state title

The Minnesota Star Tribune

March 14, 2026 at 6:13 PM

After a near-perfect 29-1 regular season, the Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s Knights shed their serious game faces and let blinding grins show with a minute left in their 80-63 over Mountain Iron-Buhl in the Class 1A girls basketball state championship game at Williams Arena.

The Knights secured the program’s first state title on Saturday, March 14, after four previous tournament visits. Their secret? Crafting a season of strong first halves for a moment like this one.

“We’ve had a lot of strong first halves all year, so I think once that gets going, it’s a benefit to us,” coach Bruce Woitas said. “Just a credit to these guys: how they play the game, and how they love the game, and the passion they share in their experience with each other. They’re unselfish and get the best shot.”

Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s expected the Rangers to start the first half with the reputation they’d built all season: Plenty of three-pointers. But Mountain Iron-Buhl tipped off uncharacteristically slow on the state tournament stage. By halftime, the Rangers hadn’t made a single three-pointer in 13 tries. The Knights, in contrast, were up 42-16, with top scorer and junior guard Morgan Mathiowetz putting away 18 points and three three-pointers.

“I don’t think things could have gone any more south in the first half if we tried,” Mountain Iron-Buhl coach Jeff Buffetta said. “We just couldn’t get anything to go right. We were trying. I think sometimes you start to try too hard to get things to go right when it doesn’t start right.”

The Rangers picked up momentum at the start of the second half, with junior guard Anna Neyens’ eye for three-pointers closing the scoreboard gap to 56-43. Mountain Iron-Buhl outshot Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s in three pointers 24-15, but the Knights found the net, making 33.3% of their shots compared with the Rangers’ 20.8%.

No one could quite match Mathiowetz, one of the top scorers in the state who put up 41 points in the quarterfinals. She had 27 points Saturday on 9-of-20 shooting, including 3 of 9 three-pointers, while sophomore guard Olivia Schieffert scored 25 on 10-of-16 shooting.

As the seconds ticked down, the roster of 15 shook each other’s shoulders on the bench as Woitas finally let a smile slide across his face. After 37 years coaching the girls basketball team at Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s, he’d reached state tournament glory.

BOXSCORE: Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s 80, Mountain Iron Buhl 63

For the girls who showed up every day for practice, lifting the trophy with pink sneakers squeaking against the court meant a season of hard work had paid off.

“It just means absolutely everything,” said Mathiowetz, who surpassed 3,000 career points and 1,000 career rebounds this season. “When you work so hard at that for so long, and you come and show up to practice every single day and work hard, just, it’s so rewarding at the end knowing that you get to take home the title. So many other people here are challenging for the same goal, and we did it.”