Sports
Lincoln girls basketball stands alone as top sports story around Springfield for 2024
Caitlin Clark captivated audiences across the nation and lured scores of new viewers to the WNBA.
Kloe Froebe and the Lincoln girls basketball team also raised the bar of excellence at the high school level.
The Railsplitters dominated to such an overwhelming degree they will surely be remembered as not just one of the top teams in the history of girls basketball in The State Journal-Register coverage area but across all sports.
Lincoln not only romped to the Class 3A state title with a perfect 38-0 run but also won by an average margin of 37.2 points per game and triggered a running clock throughout the playoffs until the state semifinals.
The all-Central State Eight Conference state championship game against Chatham Glenwood presented a clash of the area’s best female athletes.
Kloe Froebe became the first player in CS8 history to win Illinois Ms. Basketball, now proudly displayed at the city limits.
Then there was Becca Heitzig, who won the SJ-R’s Female Athlete of the Year award for a second straight year. Her superlative résumé extended beyond basketball to cross country, track and even volleyball.
Heitzig first won the individual Class 2A cross country title over the preceding fall. She simultaneously teamed up with Froebe to help the volleyball team to its best season ever as state runners-up in 3A. She later mopped up a third gold medal in the 2A 800-meter run over the spring and still harbors the state meet record from 2022.
On the other side, the Titans featured 3A state sprint champion Katelyn Lehnen and a host of talented freshman such as Alexis Neumann, who recently became the SJ-R’s Large School Volleyball Player of the Year.
Lincoln ultimately prevailed 60-44 for the school’s first basketball state title.
It far from marked the end of Froebe’s basketball career. She is quickly making an impact at Colorado State University and was named Mountain West Conference Freshman of the Week in November, while Heitzig continues to run at Iowa State University.
Lincoln has always been synonymous with basketball. That illustrious past became even richer in 2024.
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