This year the 19th annual High School boys and girls basketball game took place on Monday March 19th, at the Roy J. Carver Center at Augustana College. Each year, Iowa’s top players are matched against all stars from Illinois. Each state got a win with the Illinois girls team taking a 86-57 victory, while the Iowa boys pulled off an extremely down-to-the-wire win 111-106.
Rory Donahue, Kira Arthofer and Ellie Spelhaug from Pleasant Valley represented the school in the all-star matchup. Two of the representatives, Kira Arthofer and Ellie Spelhaug, are continuing their basketball careers playing for Division I programs, Spelhaug at Bradley University and Arthofer at Eastern Illinois University. Arthofer, who missed last year’s season due to a knee injury, bounced back to have an incredible senior season. She was named first team all-conference averaging 13.2 points, 4.2 steals, 3.8 assists and had a 52 percent field goal percentage. Spelhaug, PV’s all-time leading scorer with 1,372 points over her four year career, also had a stellar senior year finishing as the girls’ MAC player of the year, with 17.1 ppg, 5.2 rebounds, 2.4 steals and made 45.5 percent of her field goals.
All of the girls were proud of their achievements over the season and grateful for the opportunity to play in the All-Star game.
“It was really fun to play with my teammates and to compete against the best players from around the Quad Cities,” Arthofer stated.
“I had a great time getting to play with some of my teammates one last time,” Spelhaug commented. “But I think my favorite part of the whole thing was getting to play with these girls that have always been considered opponents.”
During the game Spelhaug, scored 14 points with nine of them coming in the second quarter which included a personal 7-0 run. Arthofer finished the game with six assists, with five points coming on her passes to Spelhaug.
Brian Dayman, Pleasant Valley’s six-foot-six center, played for the boys all-star team. Dayman was a Class 4A third team all-state and first team all-conference. He averaged 13.2 ppg, 8.6 rebounds, 3.5 assists and made 56.5 percent of his field goals. Dayman was a three year starter for Pleasant Valley who was just shy of 750 career points. This year Dayman was the only player in the MAC to be among the top eight in scoring, rebounding and assists. Alongside Dayman was small forward Caleb Carius. Carius was voted as one of the team captains for the Spartans. He capped off his senior year averaging 4.5 ppg and was the teams second leading rebounder with 90 rebounds on the season.
Dayman’s favorite part was playing with the players he usually only focused on beating. “It was fun being able to play with guys you normally compete with during the season,” he said.
The boy’s game started out like any other all-star game, with plenty of transition points and stylish dunks. However, at the point where Iowa was leading Illinois 81-61, the Illinois team decided to mount a comeback. They eventually tied the game at 101 with 2:31 left in regulation. Iowa was able to pull of the win in the last few minutes.
