Fineday Leading Cass Lake-Bena Girls’ Basketball into Section 8A Tournament

Cass Lake-Bena girls’ basketball’s quest to get back to the state tournament for the first time in three years begins Thursday, and they’ll be leaning on their prolific scoring senior guard Gabby Fineday to help get them there. The Panthers finished the regular season almost two weeks ago with a 19-7 record and have been practicing every day since, anxiously awaiting the start of the postseason.

In the middle school gym at Cass Lake-Bena, the Panthers girls’ basketball team preps for the start of the Section 8A tournament, led by Fineday.

“When I play my best is just when I’m in rhythm and I just let it come to me,” Fineday said of her ability to score and be the all-time leader in points at Cass Lake-Bena. “It’s definitely on my mind, but not to the point where I’m like, ‘Oh, I need to do this.’ No, I want to win before I score.”

The humble senior broke the girls’ record set by Taryn Frazer on January 9th, and on the very next night, she broke the boys’ record set by her head coach, Martin Wind, who still happens to know a thing or two about scoring.

“I brought her up in seventh grade, and ever since then, I mean, we thought Taryn was going to break it, and now she broke Taryn’s record. Then my record. Like I said, she deserved it,” said Wind. “Everyone asked me if I felt bad if someone broke it. I said, ‘No. Records are meant to be broken.’ But the best thing is I got to coach her and watch her score all the points when she broke it.”

But scoring isn’t the only thing Fineday is good at, at least not according to her teammates.

“She’s always a threat on defense. Whoever she’s guarding, she’s going to get at least one steal a game,” said fellow senior Alexiah LaRose, who plays point guard for the Panthers. “But she’s the main threat for our offense right now. And so she’s going to bring all those other players up on her and then she’s going to get an assist every time that she doesn’t score.”

“It motivates you to want to do better,” added freshman guard Rayahna Fairbanks. “She tells me to do more and builds me up more because she knows that all the defenders are on her. So, I have to do more to help because if they’re all on her, then she obviously can’t do it all.”

It’s created a team mentality that has led to success for others on the court, including LaRose, who broke the 1,000-point milestone late in the season.

“It wasn’t really always [my goal],” she said. “I didn’t really think that it was possible at first, so it was really cool getting to do that.”

“Her 1,000 points does not even show what she means to this team,” Fineday chimed in. ‘She’s the heart, she’s the soul. Her defense is incredible. Everything she does besides points, I think is way more [important].”

And Coach Wind is just happy to make one more push for state with Fineday and LaRose, who have been there every step of the way.

“[My] first year as head coach, I had [Gabby] and Alexiah,” said Wind. “This is my sixth year and this is their sixth year on varsity. I’ve got Gabby on the offensive side and then now you’ve got [Alexiah] on the defensive side. And it’s been great to have both of them.”

“This team’s special,” he continued. “The senior bunch is really tough. In their heart, they never give up. That’s the biggest thing about this team, they never give up.”

Gabby Fineday is just 27 points shy of her next milestone of 3,000 points, and she could break that mark against Clearbrook-Gonvick in Thursday’s East Subsection First Round game. She would be the first to ever do so at Cass Lake-Bena. Next year, she will play basketball at Bemidji State.