We'll be back, and we'll go further.”

Cascade Head Coach Janie Demonbreum

CENTERVILLE, Tenn. – When Cascade (21-9, 7-1) trimmed the Hickman County (23-5, 6-0) lead to just two points, 51-49, halfway through the fourth quarter, it felt like the Lady Champions were going to find a way to win yet another close contest this season. Instead, the Lady Bulldogs closed on one final run to end Cascade’s historic season inside of J. E. Cisco Memorial Gymnasium on Friday night, 67-57, in the Region 5-AA Quarterfinal.

“Obviously it’s not anything like what we wanted, even in the difficult situation that we put ourselves in from the district tournament,” a visibly emotional Janie Demonbreum said postgame, “Coming out here, we had the mindset of we are going to spoil everybody else's plans. They all played hard…I’m just proud of our girls. At the end of the day, they always played hard, they always gave everything they had…When I know that I have the better team in this one, it hurts. It hurts for me and it hurts me for the kids in the locker room.” 

Demonbreum, who guided a dramatic program turnaround at Cascade in just four seasons, saw the Lady Champions finish just 3-25 in her first year in 2022-23. This year, the program finished the regular season at 21-6 and won the District 9-AA regular season. Her two seniors – Kaegan Young and Suzanna Crews – have been there from the beginning. 

Young finishes her career as Cascade’s all-time leading scorer with 1,513 career points, and is a finalist for the 2025-26 Class AA Miss Basketball Award with the winner being announced on March 10th. Young was unable to practice all week due to the flu, and despite giving her all against a tenacious Lady Bulldogs defense, it was obvious that she was still hampered by the sickness. She finished with seven points – all from the free throw line – and five rebounds with three assists on the night before fouling out late.

“She [Kaegan Young] is leaving a legacy that so many little girls will dream about accomplishing,” said Demonbreum, “You just can’t really put it all into words. I’m going to miss her.” 

Meanwhile, Crews played her best game since her return from sickness from the Christmas Tournament in Gatlinburg, finishing with nine points on three treys, five rebounds, one assist, and one steal in her return to the starting lineup. 

“The things that she [Suzanna Crews] has overcome is ridiculous,” Demonbreum said, “She unexpectedly tears her ACL and has to spend her entire junior year on the bench watching everybody. Then her senior year, battling all the sicknesses that she’s battled trying to get her way back on the court…that kid is going to do great things in life just because she knows how to overcome adversity. She knows how to overcome it the right way and not the dirty way. That’s the best part for her. It’s been tough. She spent a lot of time doing agility just to get her knee back to what it needed to be. She spent a lot of time getting shots up.”

“I couldn’t ask more from either one of my seniors,” Demonbreum continued, “They have hearts of gold, they want the best for the girl on both sides of them. I can’t say anything but the fact that they are amazing young ladies and they truly left this program better than they found it. They did things that nobody expected them to do. They came in and were thrown to the fire as freshmen. They just wanted things to be better, and they willed that into existence. So many little girls are going to look up to them because of how hard they played and what they’ve done for our program. I couldn’t be more thankful for both of them. It’s been a wild ride for all three of us together, and Coach Woodson, I guess you could call us the four OGs, but I hate to see it come to an end and I hate to see it end this way. 

“You just can’t replicate those two. They’ve poured so much into this program.”

Cascade opened with the first five points of the game thanks to a Crews triple and a 15-footer from Lizzie Keele, and they also led 10-9 later in the period. However, Hickman County closed to take a 15-10 lead after the opening period.

After leveling the score at 15 early in the second quarter, the Lady Champions never were able to tie the game again, falling down 30-23 as halftime rolled around. The visitors never trailed by more than eight points, but Hickman County was able to respond to every Cascade run with a run of their own.

After trailing by three, 42-39, at the end of the third quarter, Cascade did manage to trim the lead down to a single point, 42-41, after Young knocked down a pair at the line 13 seconds into the fourth. Hickman County would again go on a 7-0 run to grow its lead back to eight, 49-41, with 5:35 remaining after a Bailey Cramer putback in response. The Lady Champions would not go away however, responding with a Caroline Parker layup before Jade Tolar announced her arrival with back-to-back massive triples to trim the lead back down to just two points, 51-49, with 4:04 left in the game.

“She [Jade Tolar] is a sharpshooter,” said Demonbreum, “She hasn’t been getting a lot of playing time the last few weeks, but for her to step in and know that this is her job and we need her to do it well…she did that. She did her job tonight, and she’ll probably text me Monday morning, and we’ll probably have the shooting gun out on Monday.”

Then, after finding a way to get a stop against the hosts, the backbreaking moment came that flipped momentum for good. With 3:44 remaining, Young attempted to get open for a fairly routine inbound in a one-on-one situation against Ava Floyd 94 feet away from the basket. Instead, Young was whistled for an extremely cheap offensive foul, flipping the tide back fully in favor of Hickman County as well as getting tagged for her fourth personal of the night. 

“They were holding Kaegan [Young] all night long, and I don’t know what you expect a player to do in that situation,” Demonbreum said afterwards

Off the inbound, Ava Floyd found Bailey Cramer inside for the tough two, and then Cascade had two layups roll right off the rim around the basket. When Floyd – who finished with a game-high 29 points – knocked down a contested three-pointer with 2:45 left to go up 56-49, all the wind was officially gone from the Lady Champions’ sails.

Cascade finished shooting just 29% from the field for the game, but they pulled down 15 offensive rebounds to give themselves extra opportunities. The Lady Champions made 10 threes, but were only able to score 14 points in the paint compared to Hickman County’s 24. 

Young was whistled for her fifth and final foul with 1:52 to go, and one of the greatest players in Cascade history exited the floor for the final time in her career. The UT-Southern commit, who was clearly playing under the weather all game long, is leaving quite the imprint on a now-revitalized Lady Champions program.

“Now, that level of work and preparation is the expectation every year,” Demonbreum said, ‘This is how hard you’re going to work and this is how good you’re going to be, and this is how you’re going to pull your teammates along, and these are the things you’re always going to do. We’re going to get in the weight room and work hard, we’re going to come in and shoot extra, we’re going to embrace adversity and overcome it. Those two girls put a lot of their belief and trust in God, and I think that has shaped our entire culture. You couldn’t ask for better leaders.”

Despite the early exit, Demonbreum hopes that this team is remembered fondly for their proficient success over the previous two-and-a-half months.

“When you look at our season this year, I just hope that people will remember the 21-6. All those wins, all the work that went into those wins and how our girls fought through those wins, I hope that people remember that about this team. It’s heartbreaking for me to realize that we went 0-3 in the postseason, and some people will just focus on that and say we did nothing in the postseason. To see us go from 3-25 to 21-6 and win the district in the regular season, that’s a special turnaround…Coach Woodson highlighted the fact that they pulled Grundy and Cannon out of our district and traded them for Loretto and Summertown. Our girls were able, for two months, to buckle down and focus and be successful during the regular season. It speaks volumes to their dedication and will to be successful.”

Despite Hickman County’s Ava Floyd finishing with 29 points, Cascade forced her to take 19 shots. She finished 9-of-19 from the floor, and her primary defender was Lizzie Keele for the vast majority of the night. Keele, who played all 32 minutes, finished with 11 points and eight rebounds as well.

“Lizzie is only a sophomore,” Demonbreum said,  “She’s only going to continue to develop and grow her game over the summer. I truly don’t think she’s done physically growing either. At one point in time, I looked out on the floor and I had four sophomores and a junior. Of course, it’s promising for the future as long as we continue to have everyone be positive around each other and pour everything we have into this program.”

That junior, Caroline Parker, finished with a team-high 14 points on the night before fouling out in the final seconds. Parker is set to return as the lone senior on next year’s squad.

Demonbreum realizes how big of a loss the two seniors will be going into next season and of course will miss the two of them greatly, but she is confident that the culture that Crews and Young helped establish will continue to drive the returners heading into 2026-27.

“The last four years have flown by. This year went by entirely too fast. It’s a ride that is stressful, heartbreaking, joyful, it gives you all the emotions, and then it gives you these kids that my kids look up to. They’ve been with them for the last five years since Kaegan and Suzie were in eighth grade. This one is going to hurt…but we do have girls that will step up in their place.”

“We’ll be back, and we’ll go further.”

The Lady Champions’ 2025-26 campaign comes to a close with a 21-9 record overall.

CASCADE: C. Parker 14 (1), L. Keele 11 (2), S. Crews 9 (3), J. Tolar 9 (3), K. Young 7, L. Comstock 4, J. Laughlin 3 (1). 

HICKMAN CO: A. Floyd 29 (1), K. Everette 13 (1), B. Cramer 12, Z. Chilton 5 (1), T. Davis 3 (1), H. Gordon 3 (1), J. Hassell 2.