photo by: Nick Henthorn

John Marshall’s Masyn Inclan drives down the lane during a regular-season game against Weir.

MOUNDSVILLE — There’s a lot of excitement circling the John Marshall Monarchs girls basketball squad, who finished up their regular season schedule last week with a victory over Fairmont Senior. The Monarchs have a tidy 16-6 record, with victories over the likes of Union Local, East Fairmont, Martins Ferry, University and Indian Creek.

Their next game, though, will be their biggest yet.

John Marshall is the top seed in this year’s Class AAA, Region 1 Tournament. Each of the four regions will send two teams to the state tournament in Charleston. For the Monarchs’ part, they will await the winner of Thursday’s regional semifinal game between Fairmont Senior and North Marion to find out who they will face for a spot in the state tournament.

They’ll be waiting awhile. John Marshall will not play until March 3, where they will host the winner of the Polar Bear/Husky matchup at 7 p.m. inside the John Marshall Fieldhouse.

Though, with how long John Marshall has been waiting for a chance to punch their ticket to the Charleston Coliseum, what’s a few more days?

John Marshall was last in the state tournament all the way back in 1994– “Before any of them were alive,” Monarchs coach Brock Melko observed of his squad.

And while there is excitement circling the Monarchs team, there’s even more inside the locker room.

“I’m excited, the kids are excited. The school seems to be excited,” Melko said. “The layoff we have from our last game to this game, it’s only been a few days but it’s already felt like a lifetime.

“I’m sure these next days are gonna go by really slow, but we’re just really excited. Not only to play, but just the fact that we’ve earned a game at the Fieldhouse. I think that has a chance to be a special environment and I’m excited to see what that looks like, to host a regional championship here.”

Though the Monarchs have finished with winning records for each of the last four seasons, this will be the first time in that stretch that they will host a regional final as the top seed.

“We’re finally in a position that we haven’t been in a long time with the home regional game, being number one in our region,” John Marshall senior Rilee Storm said.

“In the past few seasons we’ve been just kind of focusing on trying to play our best game, and hope that the other team plays their worst game. But now we’re just locking in, playing as hard as we can in practice, executing everything and getting ready for this regional final game because we can do some big things here.”

Storm has starred for the Monarchs this season, averaging 20 points, nine rebounds and over two steals per game. She sits at 1,677 career points and is 17 away from a school record total.

Fellow senior Kaylee White leads the team in assists with four a game, and also averages 10 points and four rebounds per. She made her 100th career 3-pointer in John Marshall’s penultimate regular-season game vs. Weir.

Junior Kalyn Reese is second on the team in scoring at over 11 per game, while sophomore Paislee Babiczuk is second on the team in rebounding with over seven per game.

Senior Masyn Inclan is a starting lineup mainstay, while seniors Nia Miller and Lainee Farmer, and junior Nora Shock have carved out roles off the bench throughout John Marshall’s regular season.

“The thing about this group is that they’ve been good the last four years, since they’ve been here,” Melko said “It’s just taking that next step, of just being good, to getting really good, to, hopefully, great. That’s where we’re trying to get this year.

“Our student support has been great, all the people coming to the games. They’re so easy to root for, they’re coachable, they listen to what we tell ’em to do. They always play hard. They’re just good kids. They have their friends in school, students, family members, just fans; they want to come support them because they’re just kids that deserve nothing but the best.”

A raucous student section inside the John Marshall Fieldhouse– and quite often the visiting student section at away games– has been a boost which brought a smile to the Monarch seniors’ faces.

“It’s been so exciting to have a bunch of people here, and they’re not just here, but they’re into the game too and it just makes it really fun to play,” Kaylee White said. “It doesn’t matter what team it is, they hype us up and we’re all into the game.”

“We have kids from school coming to the games that don’t know a single thing about basketball and they’ll come to school the next day and tell us that they want to come back,” Storm said. “I think we know how to put on a show and we know how to get the crowd into it and we just make it really fun.”

While the Monarchs will have an opportunity to snap a 32-year drought come March 3, for the Monarch seniors, it has been a different kind of opportunity, one that they have been building towards for nearly as long as they can remember.

“I think that getting the extra three years playing with each other in high school was really big for us,” White said. “But I mean, we’ve been playing since, what, third grade together? Just getting this extra time together has made us play really well together. We have grown together just about as much as we could’ve ’till now.”

“This year we’ve been able to really combine everything where it all just flows together,” Storm said. “Playing with each other since third grade definitely helps and we can kind of just read each other. I know what they’re gonna do before they even know what they’re gonna do. It’s kind of cool.”

John Marshall is competing in Class AAA this year after being in Class AAAA for years previous. The change in competition has coincided with changes in expectations.

“In the past no one really expected us to get there,” Masyn Inclan said. “And this year it’s kind of different because I feel like more people do, and we have more support, and people do expect us to do well there.”

“It’s exciting being in this position because we never have been in it before. I’m just really excited.”

John Marshall has already notched wins over both North Marion and Fairmont Senior this year, but past results hardly matter. Melko is keeping his team’s eyes on the prize.

“It wasn’t like they just showed up and won from day one,” Melko said of his group. “We knew they were good all along, but we’ve talked a lot about growing together, taking some beatings when they were younger and being thankful for those ’cause they’ve helped shape us. They’ve exposed where we needed to get better, some areas that we needed to work on. And they’ve worked hard and they’ve become a team that has a chance to do something that hasn’t been done in 32 years.”

Getting to Charleston would be a big feather in these Monarchs’ caps– or perhaps, more aptly, crowns.

“It’s been on the top of our goals list for four years and the chance to finally be able to get there, and do well there, is really exciting,” White said.

“I’ve been dreaming of playing down there since the day I was born,” Storm said. “I distinctly remember when Coach Melko played there, I was a baby then. It’s a feeling that I want to feel again, but on a different side of it, I want to be that player and I can’t wait, because it feels like everybody in Marshall County’s kind of just sitting on our shoulders supporting us, even if they’re not there. And I think it’d be really cool because the whole county would feel it.”