By Rodney Haas 

605 Sports 

WATERTOWN — All year long Hamlin adopted a quote from the late Kobe Bryant, “Outwork everyone.” 

It’s a quote that perhaps holds dear to the Chargers, after watching their previous two Class A championship appearances end in disappointment. 

“We just followed that and you can see when we’re diving on the floor and the way we play defense,” Hamlin coach Tim Koisti said. “That’s the way we play.”

In Saturday’s Class A championship game, the Chargers lived by their motto by outworking and coming up big on defense when they needed to — holding off Wagner 58-55 to give Hamlin its elusive title.  

“These kids worked their tails off all year long for this and we just kept fighting and clawing,” Koisti said. “Wagner is such a good team — they kept coming at us, coming at us and these kids are amazing.”

Kami Wadsworth led the Chargers with 17 points and seven rebounds while Brooklyn Brandriet had 14 points and Ally Abraham added 12 points.   

“It was kind of a flashback from the last couple of years,” said Kami Wadsworth referring to Wagner jumping out to a 20-11 lead in the first quarter, thanks to a 17-3 run. “Coach called a timeout and we just said, ‘There is a lot of game left to be played’ and we knew the defense was going to win it. We just locked in our defense and we knew the shots would end up falling.”

After trailing 20-14 at the end of the first quarter, the Chargers would outscore the Red Raiders 20-13 in the second quarter to take a 34-33 lead at halftime and held a 46-43 lead heading into the fourth quarter. 

“I think the biggest thing is the unity that we have with each other,” said Koisti referring to the Chargers losses to Aberdeen Roncalli in 2021 and St. Thomas More in 2022. “We already had the feeling of losing. We can survive that feeling, so let’s go out and win it.”

Ashlyn Koupal led Wagner with 14 points while Emma Yost had 13 points and Shalayne Nagel added 10 points. 

This is the first state championship appearance for Wagner since 1998 when the girls basketball season was played in the fall before the change in 2003. 

“These girls deserve this,” said Wagner coach Michael Koupal of the Red Raiders' state tournament run. “Just to get here, we had to battle. We had a tough region. We had to knock off Tea and then we had three good teams here. We handled Rapid City Christian fairly easily, we handled Sisseton. Tonight just wasn’t our night.”