Ishpeming girls basketball had their own 'Mean Girls' moment. Now Hematites are D-4 champs

EAST LANSING — Tina Fey messed up.

When deciding to make a musical version of "Mean Girls," she should have forgotten about filming it in New Jersey and brought the operation to our Upper Peninsula — Ishpeming, to be exact.

Once there, she could have zeroed on the girls basketball team as the centerpiece of the story.

If you want innuendo, conflict and back-stabbing, we’ve got the team for you.

If you think Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal had difficulty coexisting at times as teammates, well, the Hematites will make the Kobe/Shaq feud look like a honeymoon.

The essential characters are senior Jenna Maki and sophomore Jenessa Eagle.

The movie would begin with the 2022-23 season, when Maki was the high-scoring junior and Eagle was the hotshot freshman, new to the team.

“Last year there was a lot of selfish basketball,” Maki said. “I mean, I can personally say that. Me and Janessa specifically, we had a of back and forth, who’s better, stats and stuff.”

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That is not a unique situation. You can find conflicts of that nature on teams throughout the state.

But this was different.

“She was a good player and I had gone those first two years sort of leading the team a little bit,” Maki said. “At first it was ... I’m not going to lie, we did not get along at all. No, it was actually terrible. It was fighting every day.”

Fighting? Are we talking fisticuffs?

“Pretty close sometimes,” Maki said. “It was not good.”

Eagle was not so subtle.

“Yes, definitely, we HATED each other,” she said. “Like, every day, fighting in practice. Like throwing balls at each other. We did not like each other. One play I got yelled at and I threw the ball right at her head.”

Fortunately, Eagle was more accurate aiming at the basket as opposed to Maki’s head and she missed.

These young ladies were not exaggerating their feelings for one another and they were stunned it took their teammates a while before they picked up on it.

“Everyone was surprised when we told them that we hated each other,” Eagle said. “We were both just alpha females who wanted to always have the spotlight.”

Since they were teammates, they had to learn to play together, but that doesn’t mean they enjoyed it.

Even passing to each other was almost too much of an imposition.

“It was ugly faces at each other when we did,” Maki said. “It was not pretty.”

Ishpeming coach Ryan Reichel knew this team, despite last season’s 15-7 record, had the talent to compete for the Division 4 state championship this season, but the dynamic between the two leading characters had to change from a year ago.

So the Hematites hit the road.

“We traveled over 2,000 miles together to different team camps,” he said. “We played over 30 games this summer. We went to six different camps, we were everywhere. Anywhere that had a team camp and they wanted to go, we went.”

One of the extra benefits is the players had a lot of time to find a common bond.

Eagle and Maki had a lot more in common than they imagined. Their talent levels made them different from their teammates, but more alike to each other.

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“I’ve always explained to girls that were great at the high school level that kind of rub people the wrong way,” Reichel said. “They go on to play college basketball, they’re going to have best friends in college because they’re all just like them.

“Those two are a lot alike, that’s why they butted heads, kind of like having a little sibling.”

The Hematites did well at the camps, but knew there were still ego problems keeping the team from reaching its true potential.

Someone had to make the first move toward reconciliation, and it turned out to be Maki.

“I would say it was me, maturity,” said Maki. “I realized that wasn’t OK anymore and we weren’t going to go anywhere playing like that. She was only 15, so she still needs to mature a little bit, so I should have been expected to step up first and I did.”

It took a while for Maki and Eagle to come to some sort of agreement. We’re talking teenage girls here; it was complicated.

As the summer wore on, the pair warmed to the idea of sharing the ball, not to mention the spotlight. They even liked the way they were playing together.

“Over the summer we went to a lot of camps, we got a closer bond,” Eagle said. “Then the talks started coming out. People said Ishpeming could make a state run. We thought to ourselves, 'Yeah, if we really want to make a state run, we have to learn how to be a team.'”

Eventually they became a team and much more. Ishpeming finished the season 28-1 with an impressive 73-54 victory over Kingston on Saturday morning in the championship game. Eagle scored 27 with five 3-pointers, and Maki scored 24.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about championship day was the impressive turnout of Ishpeming fans, the most from any of the eight participating schools.

“When you see that crowd tonight, that was a lot of blue up there,” said Reichel. “And they’re driving seven hours, expensive gas prices, hotels, food when they could have been on spring break in Florida. But they came to support these girls because they are part of their family.”

Over the course of the summer, Reichel did a lot to make sure Eagle and Maki were together, subtly encouraging them to bond.

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“It didn’t happen by accident,” he said. “We did a lot of fostering and putting them in positions to succeed together. I didn’t make them sit together, but now they’re sitting next to each other every time. They’re best friends.

“If one of them is having a bad game and she might be shooting too much, the other one is hugging her, telling she’s got the next one. They put their egos to the side.”

Reichel always knew Maki would have to be the first one to crack, the one who would reach across the aisle to Eagle to find a way to work through their disagreements.

“Her becoming unselfish changed this team,” the coach said. “If your best player can do that and she will do anything for the team, it sends ripples all the way down through the program.

“It was hard to navigate, but they had to navigate some of that on their own. It’s a life skill. You’ve got to work with people you don’t like sometimes.”

But what about working with people you absolutely hate?

“It’s funny,” Reichel said, “they hated each other and now they’re two best friends.”

You could say they became even closer than best friends.

“Now she’s like a big sister,” said Eagle. “We work together really good.”

Now we just have to find out for Tina Fey if they can sing and dance.

Mick McCabe is a former longtime columnist for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at mick.mccabe11@gmail.com. Follow him @mickmccabe1.

Save 10% on his new book, “Mick McCabe’s Golden Yearbook: 50 Great Years of Michigan’s Best High School Players, Teams & Memories,” by ordering right now at McCabe.PictorialBook.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Ishpeming girls had own 'Mean Girls' moment. Now Hematites are champs.