Fairmont looks to stout defense in Section 3AA tourney

FAIRMONT, Minn. (KEYC) - After going a near-perfect 21-3 in the regular season, the Fairmont girls’ basketball team shifts its focus to the Section 3AA tournament.

The Cardinals enter as the south sub-section 2-seed and will look to its stout defense to come out on top.

“I think that we all know and believe that we can get a lot farther than people think that we can,” Cardinals senior guard Emma Gudahl said.

The culture inside the Cardinals locker room is built on hard work, modeled daily by the program’s six seniors.

“They just have this tenacity about them that I can’t describe. They work so hard together and they just want to battle every single possession. There’s just no give up with this group,” Fairmont girls’ basketball coach Sara Junkermeier shared.

Fairmont knows what it takes to be great. It starts with conditioning in practice, then translates to a suffocating style of defense that forces the opposition into ill-advised passes.

“We really love the game. I can’t think of one person on this team who doesn’t want to be here every single day. We work so hard in practice that when we get to games, we want to show off those skills and what we’ve worked so hard to go for,” Gudahl added.

Junkermeier started with the program in 1999, bringing continuity to the Cardinals bench. This year’s group began playing together back in elementary.

“We’ve kind of grown up together through varsity basketball,” Junkermeier said.

“We’ve all been playing together since we were in fourth grade, so we’re all super close and we know the chemistry well between us. That’s helped us a lot on the team and we just want to end with a bang and give it all we got, because we know there’s not a next year. This is it,” Fairmont senior guard Rayah Quiring said.

You can’t share the story of Fairmont girls’ basketball without mentioning Ava Terfehr.

Terfehr was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma late last year, but treatment isn’t stopping her from the action.

“It brought us very close together. We all want to be there to support her through this very tough time and I think we’ve all gotten way closer together, we want to support her and we want to make her feel like she’s not in this alone,” Quiring added.

The Cardinals defeated Pipestone Area 71-58 to advance to a quarterfinals match up with 3-seed Minnesota Valley Lutheran.

Tip-off is slated for Tuesday at 7 p.m. in Windom.

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