Marshfield hoops punches ticket to state basketball tournament, ends 31-year drought
MARSHFIELD – Last season, Marshfield coach Chris Fischer headed into a somber locker room at Stevens Point after their WIAA Division 1 sectional final game against Neenah.
They had just lost a heartbreaker, falling to the Rockets 52-48. The Tigers were in a position to pounce, but the loss meant that the school's 30-year-long state tournament drought would have to wait one more year to finally end.
In the locker room, they bid emotional farewells to the seniors, and Fischer opened lengthy discussions with their returning players about their future desires.
He feels that loss helped motivate the Tigers to break through and win their fourth consecutive Wisconsin Valley Conference title this season. This time, they reached the sectional final and punched their ticket to the WIAA boys' state basketball tournament for the first time in 31 years with an emphatic 62-35 win over Kimberly.
When the final buzzer sounded, it all became real.
"Lots of emotion, lots of emotion," Fischer said. "It is the culmination of a lot of hard work from a lot of different people. And it was incredible. It was the best feeling in the world.
You think about it as a coach and as a young player, and you think about what it would be like, what you're going to say, and how you're going to react. But you really don't know until that final buzzer sounds."
Fischer and his brother, University of Oshkosh girls basketball coach Brad Fischer, are both sharing similar successes at the moment. They are climbing to the top of their championship tournaments, with Fischer leading the Tigers to Madison at state and his brother leading the Lady Titans to the Division III Final Four.
His brother and everything they have gone through together was also heavy on his mind.
"I thought about my brother, who's a coach himself, and all the times and all the conversations we've had about helping each other and just talking basketball," Fischer said.
I thought about my assistant coaches. And you think about your players and the times when you know you were looking for coaching jobs and the people that helped you get them. There was a lot going through my mind in a short period of time. So, it was a very emotional moment for me."
Marshfield's leading scorer, guard Brooks Hinson, committed to Northern Michigan ahead of the season. Early in the year, he said reaching state and performing in the Kohl Center has always been a dream of his.
He'll see that dream come to fruition on Friday, March 21 against Waunakee with a state championship game on the line.
Fisher and his staff have had a trying road to getting Marshfield back to the tournament stage, and the work has just begun. But after a few seasons of stumbling just short of state aspirations, the light at the end of the tunnel is glaring.
"It's validation that the things you're trying to implement in your program are working," Fischer said. "You're still looking for ways to improve, but you're doing a lot of good things. And the competitor that I am, and the competitor that we've got on our program, in terms of players and assistant coaches, we're not satisfied with where we're at.
"We're not going down there to lay an egg. We're going down there to compete. We're going down there just like the other teams in our division. We're going down there with the belief that we're going to play well, and we're looking forward to the challenge."
Contact or send game stats/info to Sports Reporter Alfred Smith III at alfred.smith@gannett.com. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @AlfredS_III.
This article originally appeared on Marshfield News-Herald: WIAA basketball: Marshfield hoops is headed to state tournament
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