By Brennan Stebbins (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
There wasn’t much to be said after Republic’s season ended with a quarterfinal loss to Raytown on Saturday night in Bolivar.
But the Tigers’ student section found the right words with a “Thank You Kaemyn” chant.
It was a fitting salute to 5-foot-10 senior guard Kaemyn Bekemeier, the team’s lone senior this season who will take her talents to Missouri State in the fall.
She ends her high school career with an 18-point performance against a stingy Raytown team that earned a 50-43 win and advanced to Friday’s Class 6 semifinal round against Incarnate Word Academy at Great Southern Bank Arena in Springfield.
“I’m a little hurt but, you know, it was a great season and something I’ll forever cherish,” Bekemeier said in the hallway outside the locker room at Southwest Baptist University. “Being the lone senior, they made me feel special, made me feel like a role model and going out the way we did wasn’t what we wanted but we did a lot that I think a lot of people didn’t think we could.”
The Tigers, 26-4, won their first district title since 2020. They entered Saturday on a 12-game win streak.
But Raytown’s Lady Jays came to play.
Bekemeier opened with eight points in the first quarter to help the Tigers to a 12-9 lead, and her 3-pointer midway through the second quarter made it a 21-15 game. Raytown scored the next seven points to take a brief lead, but junior Alaina Norman scored underneath in the final seconds to send the Tigers to the half ahead 23-22.
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The third quarter is where things went wrong.
It was 28-25 after Norman’s three-point play early in the third, but then Republic didn’t score again for more than six minutes and the Lady Jays’ took control with an 11-0 run and led 36-30 going into the fourth.
Republic trailed by as many as eight in the fourth quarter after Raytown hit a second chance 3-pointer. But Bekemeier answered with a trey on the other end to make it 42-37 with 3:54 remaining.
Then she grabbed a defensive rebound and scored on a layup to get within three.
It was still 46-43 when junior Lauren Chastain scored with about a minute remaining, but Raytown answered with a bucket and then the Tigers turned it over.
The Lady Jays made two free throws with 19 seconds left for the final score, and after a Republic miss, only had to dribble it out to end the game.
“There’s not a lot of words to explain it,” Bekemeier said of her standout career. “It was an opportunity that was just once in a lifetime. I’m just grateful I was able to have this community behind me and this God-given talent that I was given. All the glory goes to Him, just that I was able to do what I do and able to end on this.”
“Even just being in the top eight in the state is special,” she said. “It shows what our hard work has done.”
Norman scored 11 points to follow Bekemeier’s 18, junior Misora Nambara had six and Chastain, junior Alexandria Price and junior Molly Mason each had two.
Raytown, 24-2, was led by 15 from junior Summer Yancy.
