JCC Boys Basketball Team Class AA runners-up; local connections to two on roster
When any Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL) State Tournaments come ’round each season, quite often there is to be found a “six degrees of separation” connection of the participants – to the Mountain Lake, Butterfield or Odin areas – if those schools are not represented in the contest themsevles.
In this year’s MSHSL State Class AA Boys Basketball Tourney, there was not much separation space between the Jackson County Central Boys Basketball squad and Mountain Lake.
In fact, there are a pair of connections from the team to the locals.
One of those associations is the Huskies’ 6’9″ senior center Bodey Behrends. Bodey’s parents are Chuck and Brenda (Duerksen) Behrends, Chuck graduated from Mountain Lake Public High School in 1978, and Brenda in 1979.
The second affiliation is with JCC 5’6″ junior guard Jacob Christopher, the son of Wayne and Trish Christopher. Trish was an educator at Mountain Lake Public Elementary School, teaching fourth-grade, first-grade and kindergarten while with the school system. In addition, Wayne’s late mother, Doris (Nickel) Christopher, was the daughter of the late Peter W. and Linda (Loewen) Nickel of Mountain Lake, and the sister of Donald P. (Pauline) Nickel of Mountain Lake.
JCC – an unseeded team going into the tournament and competing at the state level for the first time in the program’s history – finished as the Class AA runner-up, losing in the championship game in the Target Center in Minneapolis to Braham, 96 to 90, on Saturday afternoon, March 12, .
In the opening game of the state tourney on Wednesday, March 9, JCC downed the second-seed Caledonia by five, 79 to 54 in William Arena on the campus of the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, and advanced to the finals with a Friday night, March 11 victory over Annandale, 63 to 46, at Target Center.
Both Behrends, who will be attending Augustana University in Sioux Falls, South Dakota next fall and playing men’s basketball for the Vikings, as well as Christopher, were named to the 2016 Class AA Minnesota State Boys’ Basketball All-Tournament team, presented by Wells Fargo and the MSHSL. Another JCC player, guard Matt Ringkob was also named to the team. The team was selected by the media attending the tournament.
Others named to the All-Tourney team were Annandale forward Jarod Wilken; forward Trenton Krueger, guard Aage Rovney and guard Ade Murkey of St. Croix Lutheran and forward John Larson, guard Chris Olson and guard Ryan Larson of Braham.
