T-L Photo/SETH STASKEY UNION LOCAL senior Keira Gregor cuts down piece of the net following the Jets' 49-40 victory against Tusky Valley Saturday in a Division III Eastern District championship game at Buckeye Trail.

OLD WASHINGTON – Union Local’s girls basketball has been on the brink of the ‘Sweet 16’ numerous times only to come up short in the district championship game.

Prior to Saturday’s Division III title game against Tusky Valley at Buckeye Trail High School, the Jets players and coaches talked openly about not letting another opportunity pass by them.

The message clearly resonated.

With talented juniors Torre Kildow and Reagan Vinskovich once again leading the way, the Jets took care of business and can now make travel plans to Logan High School on Wednesday night for a Division III regional tournament game after posting a cherished 49-40 victory.

“I am just so proud of these girls,” first-year Union Local head coach Scooter Tolzda said as he stood and watched his players climb the ladder and cut down the net. “Despite playing sloppy and missing free throws, we were able to win and that’s a credit to our girls.”

While the Jets are making their maiden voyage to the regional, they’ll have to look no farther than their head coach for some advice on what to expect. After all, Tolzda has guided a team to a district championship in five of the last six seasons, dating back to his tenure as the Meadowbrook boys coach. He also took one of his early Beallsville teams to the regional, giving the eventual hall of fame coach six district championships in his career.

“It’s really unbelievable when you think about it,” Tolzda said. “They all feel good, but this one is very special, especially since it’s the first regional of any (girls) team in the school’s history.”

Next up for the Jets is a date with top-ranked and undefeated Wheelersburg, which won the Southeast 1 district title Friday night, 49-42, over Leesburg Fairfield.

“It’s going to be exciting to play Wheelersburg,” Tolzda said. “We saw their district final and two other times. We think we have some things that can cause them some problems, so if we can take some things away from them, we’ll have a heartbeat.”

Before any thoughts would shift to the Pirates, the Jets had a tall task with a Trojans club that has dealt UL stinging defeats in district championship games across a variety of sports in recent years.

That’s where those conversations before the game came into play.

“We’ve been wanting to win the district championship for many years and to be able to do it to make history for our school means a lot to us,” Kildow said. “We talked about what it would be like to make history and the opportunity we had.”

The pre-game speech came in handy because Union Local got off to a strong start, racing to a 14-9 lead after one quarter.

The Jets were able to assume control by establishing Vinskovich on the interior. With the guards making a concerted effort to find her, Vinskovich scored 10 of her 19 in the first quarter.

Despite struggling at the foul line in the second quarter, Union Local was able to extend its lead to 23-16 at the half. Kildow scored five points in the period and Vinskovich added four.

Many of those aforementioned free throw struggles occurred in the second quarter where the Jets meshed just five of 13 tries.

“Reagan in the first half came up big several times and not just with her scoring,” Tolzda said. “How many times did she keep a ball alive? She was working hard out there and had an amazing first half. I told her at halftime, ‘Reagan, you have 16 more minutes in you!’ She was fighting for everything she had. She was a warrior out there.”

Union Local dealt with its first and only real Tusky Valley run in the middle portion of the third when the Trojans scored seven straight to knot the game at 28 with 4:20 to play in the third.

From there, however, the Belmont Countians scored 14 of the game’s next 15 on a run which stretched into the fourth quarter.

Kildow had two buckets to help end the quarter and senior Keira Gregor, who drew rave reviews from her head coach because of her defensive work on Tusky Valley’s Brook Stookey, made an impressive move for a bucket late in the third.

As the spurt continued, Vinskovich posted a conventional 3-point play and Kildow knocked down a bonus goal of her own to extend the lead.

Back-to-back Vinskovich buckets pushed Union Local’s lead to 46-31 and the Trojans – despite a late 7-0 run – never recovered.

Vinskovich, who finished with 19 points and an impressive 18 rebounds, also had four steals and came up with several 50-50 balls during the course of the game.

“This (win) is really special,” Vinskovich said. “No one else in Union Local has ever done this. We want to keep it going. We want to see how far we can go.”