NORMAL — It was the same story at the same place for Geneva High School varsity girls basketball coach and former Rochelle Township High School student-athlete Sarah Meadows.

Meadows led the Vikings to their first-ever state championship last season, when Geneva defeated previously-unbeaten Edwardsville 41-40 on a game-winning shot by Stephanie Hart. Geneva returned to the state championship at Illinois State University’s Redbird Arena this winter, and the Vikings prevailed once again, edging Montini 28-26 on another buzzer-beater by Hart to claim its second state title and its first back-to-back championship stretch.

“It’s amazing,” Meadows said. “I still can’t believe it. I’m so happy and proud of our kids… I was in shock and I couldn’t believe the game was over. Usually in close game like those, the last few seconds take forever. The shot went in and I was waiting for a whistle and a timeout but it never happened. I heard the buzzer instead and I couldn’t believe it.”

Geneva finished 29-4 last season, and the Vikings graduated just three players from last year’s state championship team including standout center Grace Loberg, who is playing volleyball at The University of Wisconsin-Madison. Ready to reload for another accomplished season, the Vikings cruised through the regular season, losing only three games before the postseason tournament began.

“We returned four of our five starters from last season, so it was a similar team this year,” Meadows said. “But we lost our big girl so we had to do some things differently. We played a little faster this year and we had to really work on the boards. We had to rebound at every position.”

Geneva’s journey to its second state championship began with a 62-37 win over Schaumburg in the regional semifinals. The top-seeded Vikings then downed conference rival Batavia 59-46 to win its Class 4A regional title before throttling Wheaton North 58-30 and Wheaton Warrenville South 48-31 to claim the Class 4A Roselle (Lake Park) sectional crown.

The Vikings handed Rockford Boylan (32-1) its first and only loss this season by a score of 54-42 to win one of four supersectionals in the state, setting Geneva up with a state semifinal game against Maine West (31-2), whose only loss prior to the state semifinals was to the Vikings. Geneva took the Warriors down for a second time, winning 58-41 to face Montini for the state championship, a team that handed the Vikings one of their three losses in the regular season.

“We knew it would be a low-scoring game going in,” Meadows said of the rematch with Montini. “Both teams played great defense and getting stops was going to win that game... Our kids bought into our plan and they executed it perfectly.”

The Broncos led Geneva 21-15 at halftime, but the Vikings locked down Montini in the second half of a very low-scoring affair. The Broncos (34-3) mustered only five points in the second half, and with the game tied 26-26 and just seconds to play, Meadows called on Hart to deliver in the clutch one more time for Geneva (31-3).

“Steph is an amazing basketball player and she’s the smartest player on our team,” Meadows said. “She has incredible composure and she holds us together and leads us every day. She plays with confidence and she trusts her teammates.”

For Meadows, who graduated Rochelle Township High School in 1997 and entered the RTHS Athletic Hall of Fame in 2014, repeating wasn’t the team’s expectation this season. Rather, Meadows said the focus for her players was defending Geneva’s state title.

Nine players will be departing after the 2017-18 school year including Hart and other key players such as Maddy Yelle and Margaret Whitley. Meadows said the Vikings will look quite different next season, but she said the standards will still be high.

“I’m not sure about a three-peat but what I am sure of is our kids will work hard in the offseason and they will play hard in every game,” Meadows said. “The want to return to state will be there and it will be fun to see what next year’s group can do.”