The Olympia Bears played the Auburn Trojans in a hard-fought game on Wednesday. Finishing the season and tallying to 56-45, the Bears tussled hard but could not find the break they needed.

The harrowing round-of-12 game was led by senior Matt Lindom, junior Brody Cronk and sophomore Brian Stevenson. The Bears sank a three ball in the first quarter and stagnated. The Bears were short 16-6, the Trojans seemed unstoppable out in the field.

Drama struck as Olympia scored two free throws before halftime and Auburn was falsely awarded one of the two points. This was corrected during halftime; with that, the score shifted to 32-23.

Olympia bridged the gap in the third quarter by out-scoring Auburn and going on some amazing scoring runs, they closed the gap as close as 4 points, but by the end of the third quarter, it was 38-44 Auburn. Hope remained for the Bears in the 4th quarter.

As Lindblom puts it, “we had it down to a four point lead [for Auburn] and if we had a clean first half making 3-5 lay-ins, that would have put us up, and it would’ve been a completely different game.”

As the clock ticked down in the 4th quarter, Auburn would sneak away with the lead winning by 11 points as the final score read 56-45, ending the Bears’ successful season thus far. 

“My favorite part was honestly seeing the whole community and school show up and be a part of what we do,” Lindblom said. Nonetheless, the defeat was crushing for the Bears who sought a defiant win. Lindblom added “We expected to win by 20. We talked about having nothing but sheer confidence when playing and so even when we were down 16-3, we weren’t going to waiver.”

The Bears squad anticipates putting much effort into returning to the Dome next year as the program’s standard has been to go to the State Championship year after year. “As somebody who is graduating, I can only imagine the goals for the guys playing next year; win a league chip, district chip and then the state chip,” Lindblom ends off.