WELLMAN — The Lynnville-Sully Hawks had big dreams for how this season might end. Their expectations were justified. After all, they cruised to an astounding 18-3 regular season, during which they bowled over a majority of their competition. Coming into the district final, their confidence must have been at an all-time high. Despite frequent slow starts, they had dominated each of their tournament games en route to a clash with 21-2 Iowa Mennonite School.

However, those dreams and expectations were ultimately wiped away by IMS in the district final 58-53 on Friday. It was yet another slow start for the Hawks, but this time it was too deep of a hole to climb out of.

“We missed a few easy shots early on, but we kept playing and that’s all I can ask for. As you go down the tournament trail, the teams get a little bit better,” Hawks’ coach Nick Harthoorn said. “We got down early again and IMS is a really good team. You’ve got to give them a lot of credit. They made us earn everything we got. It just wasn’t quite enough tonight.”