'We're going down in history:' Edgewood Academy wins first state title in girls basketball

Jason Fisher hasn't had many better birthdays.

The Edgewood Academy girls basketball coach celebrated turning 42 on Monday. He also celebrated a state title.

The Wildcats won the AISA Class AA championship with a wire-to-wire, 60-46 win over Sparta Academy, bringing home the first title in the program's history.

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For the school, though, it was the second of the school year. Most of the players who took the Cramton Bowl Multiplex court Monday played on the Edgewood team that won the Class AA volleyball championship this past fall.

"We already had that mindset that we could win coming off volleyball," said junior Jaylyn Strength.

But first the Wildcats (23-6) had to get past Sparta, which beat them 45-43 in their second game of the season. In that game, Fisher said, Edgewood went 12-of-38 from the free-throw line.

On Monday, the Wildcats led from the start. After a 3-pointer by Emma Weldon and an old-fashioned three-point play by Strength to start the third quarter, they never led by less than double digits again.

"I told them free throws and rebounds are going to win us this game," Fisher said. "We hit free throws, we got rebounds and we played defense."

It also helped that the Wildcats have been a different team over the last six weeks, in Fisher's opinion. Edgewood began the season 4-4 and 10-5 before it "started playing looser," and won 13 of its final 14 games.

"Before Christmas they were very tight," Fisher said. "I told them, if you just have fun and play basketball and do what we tell you to do, everything will take care of itself."

Sophomore guard Lindsey Brown averages close to 20 points, the only Wildcat averaging double-digits. Brown was typically brilliant Monday, scoring 17 points — 10 coming in a tone-setting first quarter — while dishing six assists.

Yet Edgewood wouldn't have won without Strength, who scored 13 points. Or 6-foot-1 Madison Martin — a "rebounding goddess" in Brown's words — and Kennedy Mensch holding down the middle. Or Molly Snow, who broke the game open with consecutive 3-pointers to start the second quarter.

"We all feed off of each other’s energy," Strength said. "We keep each other hyped up and provide for each other like a big family. When Lindsey gets going, I get going, Molly gets going."

The Wildcats will graduate just three seniors — Mensch, Snow and Weldon — so Fisher doesn't expect his team to be a one-hit wonder.

"It’s going to put us on the map," he said. "We’re going to have a lot of girls in the area notice that this is the first one that we won and want to be a part of that. ... It’s a culture that we have, not just on our basketball team but as a school as a whole. We’re trying to keep building that championship mentality."

For now, Edgewood will enjoy its first.

"It feels great," Strength said. "We're definitely going down in history."

Jacob Shames can be reached by email at jshames@gannett.com, by phone at (334) 201-9117 and on Twitter @Jacob_Shames.

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Alabama high school girls basketball: Edgewood wins first state title