Few things in high school sports are as inevitable as change. There is no lifetime contract for a student-athlete whose Senior Night celebration creeps up on a program preparing to send its standouts off to compete at the next level.

Last season, Maple Grove’s girls basketball team earned the top seed in the Class 4A state tournament and reached its first championship game, led by Ms. Basketball Jordan Ode and the Hanna triplets, Lexi, Bella and Addie. The senior quartet accounted for 59 of the Crimson’s points in the team’s 81-67 loss to Hopkins.

And then, as high school athletes do, they graduated and went on to play college ball at Michigan State (Ode), Missouri-St. Louis (Lexi), Michigan Tech (Bella) and Augustana (Addie).

Maple Grove (25-5) — back at state as the No. 4 seed and matched up against top-seeded Hopkins (26-2) in Thursday’s semifinals — isn’t sweating the fact that some different faces are leading the charge after the program’s best season.

This season, the Crimson “had no hesitation with the group that we had,” said co-head coach Jon Leyse after fourth-seeded Maple Grove’s 65-53 state quarterfinal win over fifth-seeded East Ridge at Williams Arena on Wednesday, March 11.

That group is currently without the reigning Minnesota Girls Basketball Coaches Association 4A Coach of the Year, Mark Cook, who was placed on leave before the start of the postseason for an undisclosed reason not related to the team. Assistant coaches Leyse and Stacie Olson are listed as co-head coaches in Cook’s absence.

Maple Grove’s only returning starter, All-Minnesota guard Kate Holmquist, has been a tough-to-beat defender and reliable scorer. The Montana commit is scoring 17.9 points per game, five more than last season. Holmquist finished with 18 points, a team-high seven rebounds, three assists and two steals in the win over the Raptors.

Alongside Holmquist, players like senior guard and Augustana commit Sophia Anderson and senior guard Sienna Mayer have stepped up. Anderson’s 19 points per game are a team high and triple the 6.3 points per game she averaged last season. Mayer is scoring 11.2 points per game after averaging 4.3 a year ago.

Players like senior wing Emily Gornick (6.7 points per game), sophomore post Lydia Gilbert (6.9) and senior guard Monica Stang (4.9) all saw similar jumps in their production. Add in junior post Mariah Sexton from St. Michael-Albertville (7.4) and Maple Grove boasts a formidable lineup.

“A lot of people are like, ‘Oh, you lost 50 points per game from last year.’ Well, we had girls that were on our bench that would be starters for other teams, and they just accepted their role, and now they’re taking full, full advantage of the roles that they’re put in,” Leyse said.

“When you talk about last year’s team, [our players now] got to go against great girls every single day, and they learned a lot,” Leyse added. “It’s been a special, special season, a special, special group of kids.”

Anderson, in particular, was tasked with shutting down the Raptors’ Vienna Murray, an Oklahoma-bound senior guard. She also scored 26 points against East Ridge and shot 3-for-5 from three-point range.

“I was just getting open, and my teammates were hitting me on my threes and when I was coming to the rim,” Anderson said.

Heading into a rematch with Hopkins, this Crimson group may look different than the one that made the trip to Williams Arena last year, but this team has plenty of experience facing the Royals, who bid farewell to their own share of seniors but returned 45 of their title-winning points, mostly in the form of All-Minnesota junior guard Jaliyah Diggs (15 points) and junior forward Erma Walker (28 points).

This winter, Hopkins handed Maple Grove an 89-56 loss on Jan. 6 with Holmquist out injured, then a 67-52 loss Jan. 30.

“I think a lot of the things we need to do is just focus on us and control our turnovers ... and just make sure we’re boxing out and limit their offensive rebounds,” Holmquist said. “We’ve already played them twice, and we have all of that film. We know what we need to do better, and I think we’ll lean on that as we go into the game tomorrow.”

Hopkins also knocked Maple Grove out of the 2024 state semifinals, 84-78, thanks to 30 points from Walker.

“I think we’re excited,” Holmquist said. “I think we’re we have a lot of motivation to just go out there and leave it all out there.”