Sugarbeeters among Northern C girls favorites in Great Falls

In their final year of Class C girls basketball, the Chinook Sugarbeeters are having one heck of a season. And they checked off a huge goal last weekend when they captured the 2023 District 9C championship.

Now, (21-0) Chinook has its sights set on another prize - a trip to the Class C state tournament, and to do that, the Sugarbeeters will need to finish at least second at this weekend's Northern C Divisional, which starts today and runs through Saturday in Great Falls.

Chinook, led by leading scorer Hallie Neibauer, as well as Alexus Seymour and many others, opens the Northern C against Cascade Thursday at 9:30 a.m.

"It's going to be tough," head coach Mike Jones said. "It's always tough, so we're looking forward to the competition of having a battle each and every game like we have during this tournament."

Chinook is one of several favorites in the field this week, and is one of three 9C teams ready to battle it out in Great Falls.

District 9C runner-up North Star (16-5) begins its quest for the Northern C crown against Highwood. The Knights are led by star guard Laynie Sattoriva, while Kira King and Rainee Watson are also top scorers for head coach Scott Bymaster.

"Going forward, we just got to work on not getting frazzled," Bymaster said. "Also just going in there and competing to the best of our ability. We have a great opportunity, now we just have to go and take advantage of it."

The Knights meet the Mountaineers Thursday at 4 p.m. and are on the same side of the draw as Fort Benton. The Longhorns (15-7) finished third at the 9C on a spectacular buzzer-beating win over Hays-Lodge Pole, and they open against Belt, the third-place team from the 8C. The Huskies return to the Northern C for the first time without legendary head coach Jeff Graham, who is now the head coach at Montana Tech.

"We're going to have to readjust some things that we did here and got away with. Just readjust and make sure that we get better at some little things," Fort Benton's Eddie Fultz said. "We got some things to fix but my expectation is to compete and be in every game that we're in that we play there. I hope to compete and be in close games."

Fort Benton and Belt play this afternoon and the winner will play 10C champion Simms at 5:30 p.m. Thursday. The other first-round game pits 8C champion Roy-Winifred against 10C runner-up Augusta today at 5:30 p.m. Semifinal games for the Northern C girls are slated for Friday at 4 and 5:30 p.m. The consolation game is set for Saturday at 4 and the championship game will be played at 5:30 p.m.

All of the Northern C action will take place at the Four Seasons Arena in Great Falls. The top teams from the tournament will advance to the Class C state tournament March 9-11 in Billings.