A pair of players stepped up at the state tournament, leading their teams to titles

EASTERN IDAHO — The Pocatello Thunder and Bear Lake Bears arrived in Nampa last week as underdogs. They both knocked off their classification’s favorite en route to a state championship.

Both teams are led by a clear star — Halle Wells for Bear Lake and Abby Lusk for Pocatello — but a pair of their running mates starred in helping the Bears and Thunder reign supreme.

For that reason, the East Idaho Sports Co-Athletes of the Week are Bear Lake junior Abby Humpherys and Pocatello sophomore Madysen Torngren.

Abby Humpherys

Humpherys played 24 minutes across the first two games of the tournament, accepting a secondary role to Wells and senior Kortlyn Skinner. After the Bears beat Timberlake, 48-42, in the semifinals, head coach Ken Wells said that his team needed to shoot the ball better than it had in previous weeks in order to beat the undefeated Diggers.

“We need to play better,” he told EastIdahoSports.com after the Semifinal game. “We need to make our shots — we’ve shot terribly from outside lately, but maybe tomorrow’s our day.”

RELATED | Bear Lake overcomes slow start to earn title rematch with Sugar-Salem

Bear Lake sizzled from deep in Saturday’s championship game, shooting 9-of-17 as a team.

Humpherys finished the game 4-of-5 from deep, joining fellow junior Brooke Boehme (3-of-3) in making the coach a prophet. Making five more 3’s than Sugar-Salem (who made four) on a similar number of attempts — 17 from Bear Lake and 18 from Sugar-Salem — accounted for 15 points, with the Bears winning by eight.

Humpherys shot 6-of-8 from the field for a team-high 16 points in the 65-57 victory.

Madysen Torngren

Torngren, who spent the entire season in the starting lineup, took her game to another level during the tournament. Head coach Sunny Evans said it was much-needed, after the sophomore center finished Pocatello’s 58-46 round-one with 19 points, 10 rebounds and a steal.

“She stepped up in a big way on both sides of the ball,” Evans told EastIdahoSports.com after Thursday’s game. “I’m happy for her — we needed her to break out.”

She backed that game up with a 12-point, 10-rebound performance in the semifinals — before fouling out — helping the Thunder down top-seeded Lakeland. Then, Torngren scored 14 points on 7-of-10 shooting, to go with seven rebounds, in a 62-49 championship game victory over Sandpoint.

A Second-Team All-State goalie on the Pocatello soccer team, Torngren credited defending Lusk at practice with developing as a player, especially on the defensive end.

“Figuring out how to defend a D1-level player is hard — she (Lusk) scores a lot,” Torngren said after the Jerome game. “But when you do get a stop, it’s like, ‘OK, I can do this.’”

Both Humpherys and Torngren will be back next season, as their teams look for consecutive title runs — a three-peat in Pocatello’s case.