The Mid-Prairie Golden Hawk boys basketball team saw their season come to an end Tuesday at West Liberty High School at the hands of the Camanche Indians 67-55 in the class 2A district nine championship game. In a game heard on AM and FM KCII, Mid-Prairie got out to a dream start, beginning the game on a 13-3 run behind seven early points from Carter Harmsen and a three from Will Cavanagh. After a Camanche timeout, the Indians rebounded to tie the game at 14 going to the second. During the second period Camanche would outscore Mid-Prairie 22-13 to take a lead they wouldn’t give up the rest of the night. Down nine at half, Mid-Prairie would close the gap to seven or eight points several times during the third and fourth frames but each time they would inch closer, the Indians would make a big play, including nine three pointers on the night to keep the Hawks at bay. After the game, Mid-Prairie head coach Daren Lambert talked about his team’s play, their season and gave Camanche credit for the win. “Our message tonight was defense, defense, defense. Get the job done on that side of the floor and the offense will take care of itself. We did that early, we strung together scores and stops and put ourselves in a good spot with an early lead. After their timeout they turned up their defense, we gave up some turnovers and quick shots that led to runouts and easy looks for them. You have to give them credit. Any time we responded with a little bit of a run, they would make a big shot. They have a lot of good players that stepped up in the moment tonight. I knew Carter Harmsen was scoring and having a big night. He finished with 32 and it was a hard 32. He had to work for every single one of those. Big time players step up in big time games and he did that tonight. I told the team and the seniors to think about the things that they accomplished during the year, a lot of which hasn’t been done at Mid-Prairie in more than a decade and to remember the fact that they are leaving the program in a better place than they found it.”

The Indians turned Mid-Prairie over 14 times and finished with 20 assists. They put four in double figures led by Jordan Lawrence’s 20 points. Zach Erwin had 19, Zayne Feller 15 and Mike Delzell 10. Mid-Prairie was led by Carter Harmsen’s 32 points on 11 of 18 shooting. Mid-Prairie ends their season at 15-8, their highest win total since 2010. This was their first district championship game appearance since that same season. Mid-Prairie says goodbye to seniors Aidan Rath, Luke Boyse and Keagan Brady.