Photo Courtesy of Nicole Miller (MP Sports Social Media)

The Mid-Prairie Golden Hawk boys basketball season ended Friday night on the road at the hands of the Wilton Beavers 83-61. The Hawks, who had dropped both regular season meetings with Wilton this year, stood even through the first eight minutes at 20-20, but from there, the Beavers found another gear the Golden Hawks couldn’t match. Wilton won the second frame 25-8 to take a 45-28 lead into half and added another 11 to their advantage in the third, winning the frame 23-12 to go up 68-40 into the fourth, sealing the win. After the contest, Golden Hawk head coach Daren Lambert talked about his team’s effort, their season and seniors. “We didn’t shoot particularly well like we have the last couple of games, and credit goes to them, they’re a good basketball team. It’s unfortunate our season has to end tonight. (Early) we were hitting shots, we were being aggressive going to the rim, defending pretty well. When you’re going shot for shot with a team like that on their home floor, you have to like where you put yourself at the end of the first quarter. (Camron Pickard) is one of those guys that wants to do anything possible to make sure that the season keeps going and unfortunately his career and a few other seniors career’s end tonight. We talked in the locker room before the game that if tonight’s the end of the season we have to we have to out fighting and that’s what Cam did. Alex (Bean), Shawn (Dodds), Collin (Miller) and Cam saw a lot of time last year where they were able to be a part of that State Tournament success. There were moments throughout this season where we could have just cashed it in. We lost four straight, but came back to end the regular season with a win over a good Fairfield team and got a postseason win on Monday. That’s just the resilience that we had to show.”

Wilton shot a blistering 52% from the floor and knocked down nine threes in the win, outrebounding Mid-Prairie 38-22, dishing out 22 assists and forcing 16 Golden Hawk turnovers. Caden Kirkman led the Beavers with another monster night, a 35 point 15 board double double. For Mid-Prairie, Camron Pickard went out with a bang putting up 27 points. Mid-Prairie shot 43% as a team in the loss. The Beavers, now 18-4 meet Pella Christian Tuesday at Williamsburg for the Class 2A District 12 title. The Hawks end their year at 12-11. They say goodbye to eight seniors including Collin Miller, Camron Pickard, Alex Bean, Aiden Bush, Cain Brown, Grady Gingerich, Irman Ganibegovic and Shawn Dodds.