McGeshick, Truscott gain All-U.P. honors

MARQUETTE — Ewen-Trout Creek’s Zoey McGeshick and Ontonagon’s Chelsea Truscott were named to the All-U.P. Class D Second Team.

While those two players are seniors, all five members of the all-class All-U.P. Dream Team are not — four are juniors and one is a sophomore.

The All-U.P. team was determined during Wednesday’s 38th annual girls basketball meeting of the Upper Peninsula Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association on the campus of Northern Michigan University.

The boys team was also determined Wednesday and will be released in Saturday’s Daily Globe.

Crystal Falls Forest Park junior Lexi Gussert repeated as Class D Player of the Year. She is already up to 1,891 career points after scoring 809 this year for a 32.5 per game average. Gussert also hit 93 3-pointers — she’s 6-0 — and shot 47 percent from behind the arc.

She is being recruited by many Division I schools, most notably Connecticut and Tennessee.

Gussert was earlier named Class D Player of the Year in Michigan by the Associated Press.

Houghton junior Elisa Jurmu was named Class ABC Player of the Year. She averaged 19.7 points per game for the state semifinalist Gremlins.

St. Ignace junior Kelley Wright, Marquette sophomore Hunter Viitala and Superior Central junior Vanessa Freberg are also Dream Teamers.

Wright, the only other player brought up to challenge Gussert for Class D Player of the Year, averaged 20.1 points per game and stands at 1,122 career points. She was the best player for the Saints, which went undefeated on the way to their fourth state title.

Freberg averaged 17.5 points and 9.4 rebounds per game for Superior Central, which didn’t lose in the regular season.

Viitala averaged 16 points per game for the Redettes.

There were standout players on both the Class ABC and Class D first teams.

Among them: L’Anse’s Madi Swanson, who averaged 19.5 points per game and was the co-MVP of the West-PAC along with Jurmu; Calumet’s Lexi Rowe, who made it three West-PAC players combined on Dream Team and First Team; and on Class D, St. Ignace’s Sarah Cullip, who went to state all four years of her career, averaged 13.1 points and nine rebounds per game and will run cross country at Grand Valley State, Bark River-Harris’ Sarah Madalinski, who scored 1,523 points in her career and averaged 20.4 this year and Carney-Nadeau’s Casey Charlier, who averaged 15 points per game before tearing the opposite ACL of what she tore last year.

Marquette was named Team of the Year in Class AB, Houghton in Class C and St. Ignace in Class D.

Marquette’s Ben Smith was named ABC Coach of the Year and St. Ignace’s Dorene Ingalls in Class D. It’s the third time in four years Ingalls has been Coach of the Year (she shared it with husband Doug in 2011) and it is the fourth time overall.

This is the first such honor for Smith.

McGeshick and Truscott both helped their teams to conference titles, E-TC took the PMC title, Ontonagon the Copper Country Conference title.

McGeshick scored 12 points and grabbed eight rebounds per game. She won the Ed Helakoski Award as the Most Valuable Senior in the Porcupine Mountain Conference.

McGeshick also averages two blocks and two steals per game.

Truscott averaged 10.5 points per game for the Gladiators. She was Ontonagon’s best shooter percentage wise from inside the arc.

Also honored from the CCC was Dollar Bay’s Julia Daavettila, who averaged 14.3 points and 4.1 steals per game.