By Ainsley Schafer
Nearly a century after the last time the Northfield Boys Basketball team last made a state tournament appearance, the Raiders will be back next week, entering the tournament with a March 25 quarterfinal game at Williams Arena.
Northfield solidified its spot in the tournament after a 60-51 victory on March 12 against Austin High School in the Class 3A, Section A championship. The team’s advancement to state marks the end of what was the state’s longest-running state tournament gap for a non-cooperative program in basketball, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune.
“We’ve all known this is the goal and this is the team that is likely going to do it, and to actually put it together is pretty amazing,” said Matt Christensen, a 2005 Northfield High School graduate and Raider basketball alum who now coaches the team.
After returning to the program as head coach in 2022, Christensen has worked alongside this senior class since the group’s freshman year. Kayden Oakland, a four-year varsity player, led the team to 25 wins going into tournament play, a 10-win increase from last season.
The No. 4-ranked Raiders will compete against a familiar face for the first round of the tournament: No. 5 Mankato East. After Northfield’s 72-74 loss in the first game of the season, Christensen is “really confident” going into their next matchup. “It became a really good learning lesson about game management and we were able to learn from that really quickly,” he said.
Throughout the season, but especially during sectional matches, the Northfield community has shown their support for this program. With over 5,000 individual IP addresses streaming the section championship against Austin, there has been an “immense outpour of support from the community, especially alumni,” Christensen said. “There is just something special about Northfield.”
He said that the team would not be where it is today without the help of the Raiders’ “culture keeper” and assistant varsity coach, Grant Hemmingsen. Alongside Christensen and Hemmingsen, assistant coaches Nic Zabel and Mason Zick have worked with this program throughout the season.
Over the next week, the team will be training with the goal of moving onto state semifinals.
Northfield will kick off its tournament run at 12 p.m. on Wednesday, March 25, with the matchup against Mankato East at the University of Minnesota’s Williams Arena. The winner of that game will play in the semifinals at 12 p.m. on March 26. To listen to the broadcast of the game, tune in at FM 95.1 and AM 1080 on KYMN Radio.
