Superior's Fab Five

Ashley Blaylock, Cary Chamberlain, Kelsey Stenberg, Kaitlyn Koke and Malinda Steinebach have been playing basketball together since the fourth grade. Coming off of a 22-2 season, the five seniors reaped the benefits of their hard work – each one of them was named a Western C Conference All Star and participated in tournament play in Billings. 

“It was a lot of fun,” Senior Malinda Steinebach said. “It was awesome because rarely does your whole team make it.”

The five seniors played three games in the tournament, winning their first and then losing the next two. Steinebach said that playing with new teammates was a lot harder than she expected. 

“Everyone can score, so you feel like you are doing really good on defense but everyone can shoot,” Senior Cary Chamberlain said.

At a press conference Monday, Coach Jeff Shultz announced which of his players made All Conference and All State teams. 

Kaitlynn Koke and Cary Chamberlain made the first team for All Conference. Ashley Blaylock and junior Nicole Stroot made second team and Malinda Steinebach and Kelsey Stenberg received honorable mention. 

“This is all voted on by the coaches from around the conference, you can’t vote for your own you can just nominate them,” Coach Jeff Shultz said. “I nominated all six of the starters.”

Cary Chamberlain was named on the All State team as well, which is voted on by coaches for schools that made it to the divisional tournament. 

 “This is the best we’ve ever done, Kaitlyn made second team last year and Cary was honorable mention,” Coach Shultz said. “It feels really good because they all worked so hard and they deserve it. It was nice that the other coaches recognized that we had a lot of great players.” 

However, recognition is not what motivates the seniors from Superior, for these girls it is simply about passion for the game. 

“It’s just basketball, we all love it so much, that’s our motivation,” Chamberlain said. 

Throughout the season it was apparent that the Superior Lady Bobcats had something special going, Steinebach and the other seniors feel that it is because of their close friendships. 

“It felt good finally to have a team with no drama, were nobody fights and everybody had fun the whole season,” Steinebach said.  

Being so close to one another, the girls have all come up with nicknames for each other , Chamberlain’s nickname is Caroline. 

“It’s longer than my real name,” Chamberlain said. “But it works.” 

Steinebach is nicknamed Mindo, Blaylock got the nickname of Smiley because she is always drawing smiley faces. Kaitlynn Koke is simply Koke. 

“We call Kelsey Darth Vader because at night she breathes really loud,” Steinebach said. “Like at divisionals she was sick so when she was sleeping she was breathing really loud and I was like ‘dude we have Darth Vader in our room’ it was so funny.” 

Coach Shultz called his team “a fun bunch” and from the stories the seniors tell it seems as though fun was the most important part of playing basketball together. 

One of Koke’s funniest memories of the season is being called the devil by the assistant coach. 

“The back of the bus is really hot and all four of us were sitting back there and I yelled up there asking if they could turn down the heat because my insides were melting,” Koke said. “Our assistant coach was like ‘no it’s because you’re the devil it’s not hot back there, so they called me the devil the rest of the season.” 

The Superior Lady Bobcats were devils to their opponents during the regular season, often dominating from the tip off and never letting up. The seniors all commented that Coach Shultz preferred to keep blowouts to a minimum. 

“When we pummel people he makes us stop,” Koke said. “Like, literally just stop.” 

The seniors will all graduate in May and will move on to various colleges. However, this season they gave fans of basketball a lesson in how much fun the game can really be while demonstrating their athletic superiority at the same time.