Team of the Year: Undefeated Diggers were ‘a special group’ all season
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SUGAR CITY — The Diggers weren’t just champions, they were perfect.
Sugar-Salem went an undefeated 26-0 en route to the 2024-25 4A girls basketball title. And along the way, they went from one of the toughest teams to coach — last year — to the funnest, most coachable team, according to head coach Crystal Dayley.
“I don’t think I’ve ever wanted a state championship so bad for a group of girls,” Dayley told EastIdahoSports.com. “Every one I win is special — obviously, I love these kids and I want them all to be successful — but I’ve never wanted a team to win one so bad, because I’ve never seen a group of girls want it so bad.”
Asked when she first thought this group of girls, which consisted of seven seniors, had a real shot at winning the state championship, Dayley said she first saw it as a possibility at the end of the 2023-24 season.
Despite not qualifying for the state tournament, the Diggers remained among the top-five rankings all season last year, and they were returning the entire squad.
“I felt like we should have been at the state tournament last year, and I always knew that we would be really good — have a good chance of winning it — this year,” the coach said. “I don’t know that I ever thought we could pull off a perfect season.”
The possibility of perfection came into the view in mid-December, following the Sugar-Salem Shootout.
From Dec. 12 to Dec. 14, Sugar-Salem played three games, against Wasatch (UT), Butte County and Blackfoot (a 5A school with championship aspirations of its own).
Wasatch, among Utah’s top high school teams, was the headliner of that stretch. Sugar-Salem played them twice last summer, and lost both games by 25 points, Dayley said.
She put Wasatch and Blackfoot on her team’s schedule because she is not concerned about her team’s regular-season record. She is instead focused on making sure her team is “battle-tested” and ready for a tough postseason schedule.
“That weekend, when we beat them both, was when I thought, ‘Wow, this team is something special,’ Dayley recalled. “If they’re beating teams of that quality, I didn’t know that there was anyone in Idaho that could beat them.”
Among the things that made this Sugar-Salem squad special, the coach said, was the balance it displayed on the offensive end.
“We didn’t have one all-star, we had a whole team of them,” Dayley said.
That balance was on full display during the postseason.
After being led in scoring throughout the district tournament by senior Nika Nead, the Diggers were led in game one of the state tourney by senior Sophia Doughterty. Then, in the semifinals, senior Ashlyn Harris and sophomore Andee Petterson matched each other for a team-high in points scored. In the finals, junior Tasha Larsen emerged from a weeks-long scoring slump to lead all players with 15 points, driving her Diggers to a hard-fought victory over a game Bear Lake team.
“To me, when you have your last five games of the season — that you have a different leading scorer in every game, that’s what shows how really special this team was,” Dayley said.
Following the championship game, Dayley recalled, the Diggers showed another aspect of what made them special.
As the longtime Sugar-Salem coach explained, at the end of the grueling basketball season, players are normally ready to get away from the court. They are usually in a rush to join their spring sport teams, or just focus on school, friends and family for the final few months of the school year.
This group though, was sad to see the season end.
The players cried after the win. First, it was tears of joy for the accomplishment they’ve completed. Then, it was tears of sorrow that they would never play together again.
“They just had a good relationship with each other — those girls are truly like a family, they love each other and they always wanted what was best for each other,” Dayley said.
In fact, much of the five-hour bus ride from Nampa back to Sugar City was filled with those tears, and reminiscing of the season, and high school careers that were.
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