Feb. 24—Concord Academy put on a courageous performance in Saturday’s NCISAA 3A women’s basketball state championship game. It wasn’t enough to prevent Grace Christian’s Lady Crusaders from making history.
The Eagles repeatedly picked themselves off the deck in a showdown with a team that had beaten them in their own gym by 41 points earlier this season, and kept the outcome in doubt well into the fourth quarter. However, there was no beating this Grace team, which began its first year of the post-Sarah Strong era the way it had completed that one.
The Lady Crusaders opened the game on an 11-0 run, watched Concord hit them right back with an 11-0 run of its own, and then hit back to lead by as many as 21 in the second quarter. However, the Eagles came on strong again after halftime, and it wasn’t until the last minutes that Grace was safely on its way to a 56-45 victory and a fourth consecutive state championship.
Grace, which ended the 2024-25 season at 22-4, won the NCISAA 1A state title in 2022, then the 2A crown in 2023. Increased enrollment at the school moved them into the 3A classification a year ago, when Grace went 30-0 and was the consensus best high school team in the state of any class.
This year’s team was very different. A few players returned from the Strong era, but not Sarah Strong herself, and the team had a new head coach in Andy Woodard. Fortunately, the program’s status attracted new talent. Jordan Speller joined Grace after leading North Pitt to last year’s 2A public state title, and Kyndoll “KJ” English came over from Cresset after leading that team to the NCISAA 1A crown and a memorable battle with Strong a year ago in Torgerson, where her team was within one possession late in the third quarter.
That 1-2 punch delivered the four-peat. English dominated inside in the first half, and Speller took over in the stretch run.
Speller, only a sophomore, scored 12 of Grace’s 16 points in the final period with the Lady Crusaders clinging to a 40-34 lead at the end of the third quarter.
With the score at 52-45 after two free throws by Caldwell’s Justice Alexander with 75 seconds left, Speller drove to the basket at the 1:03 mark and then drilled a nine-foot jumper with 34 seconds to play to make it a four-possession game. She and her teammates had masterfully milked the clock in the final minutes, and three possessions was as close as the Eagles ever got in the stretch run.
The game opened with Grace seeking the same early knockout it had gotten in recent meetings with Concord (26-7), who also fell to the Lady Crusaders in the 2024 semifinals. Isa Roman opened the game with a short jumper after just 13 seconds. English made it 4-0 in a putback and then Roman made a quick steal that led to a fastbreak basket for Speller. After a time-out, Roman connected for three on the right wing and English made a layup at the 4:53 mark for an 11-0 lead.
The Eagles then hit back behind Alexander, a 6’1″ guard listed as a freshman, but a high school varsity player ever since the seventh grade. She scored eight of the next 11 points in the game and scored inside with 2:05 left in the first quarter to tie the score. Grace led 16-11 at the end of the quarter.
English, who didn’t play in the first meeting with Concord this season, nearly helped Grace run away again in the second quarter. Late in the period, she scored nine points in a span of just 2:36, capping off what had been an 18-0 Lady Crusader run for their biggest lead of the game, 34-13 with 1:16 left in the first half. Concord trimmed the lead by five at the half on an Ava McDemott 3-pointer and a basket by Alexander just before the buzzer.
Concord made its move in the third quarter, holding the Lady Crusaders to a mere six points in the period. Freshman Faith Bekich, another young standout on the Eagle team, scored eight straight points for her team in the quarter, including two 3-pointers, and the underdogs cut the deficit to single digits. As the teams went to the final eight minutes, Grace was clinging to a six-point lead.
Speller had 23 points and English 18. Other players who made the scorebook for the Lady Crusaders were Roman with five points, Adaora Mogbo with four, and Halisi Whitley and Aaliyah Frost with three each. Whitley, a senior playing in her final game for the Lady Crusaders, is one of two four-time champions on the roster, but the only one to play in all four state championship contests. Roman and Dazaria Smith won their second rings with Grace; Speller and English their second overall in high school, and Toni Hughes is also a four-time champion with the Lady Crusaders, although she missed two of the four championship games due to injury.
Grace is, and likely will finish, as the state’s second-ranked team at any level, behind Winston-Salem Christian National, who beat Grace 41-33 in Winston-Salem on Nov. 19 in a game the Lady Crusaders played without English.
