Prep girls basketball: MIB's Burke good at making her point(s)

By Jon Nowacki on Jan 31, 2018 at 10:31 p.m.

Mountain Iron-Buhl met Goodhue for the Minnesota Class A girls basketball championship last March at Williams Arena in Minneapolis, with the Rangers having beaten Goodhue 78-34 early in the season.

While nobody was expecting that again, Goodhue’s 73-51 victory was a stunner, another heartbreak for a proud MIB program still seeking its first state championship.

“It’s frustrating sometimes, but you just have to keep working at it,” said Rangers center Mary Burke, who was dealing with a double ear infection that day. “We just didn’t play well.”

Burke is back and better than ever, and so are the Rangers (20-1) despite graduating four seniors, including Chelsea Mason, Northeastern Minnesota’s all-time girls basketball scoring leader with 3,034 points and the state’s all-time steals leader with 921.

MIB coach Jeff Buffetta said Burke, who leads the Northland in scoring at 26.7 points per game and is just five shy of 2,000 for her career, is one of a handful of Rangers who are taking advantage of increased opportunities.

MIB is proving that the Rangers don’t rebuild, they reload.

“It was motivation for us all summer,” Buffetta said. “We know what everybody else thought, but we were pretty confident in the group we had coming back, and there were a lot of kids who were waiting their turn, people like Mary, (Allie) Negen, (Macy) Savela and (Madisen) Overbye, players who had an opportunity to expand their role.”

Burke was drawn to basketball since kindergarten, when she saw her father, Don, a former Virginia High School and Mesabi Range Community College player, always messing around with a basketball. It wasn’t long before she was playing against her older brother, Patrick, who toughened her up.

“I’d always get smacked because he was a little bigger than me,” Mary said.

But not much.

Burke grew to 5-foot-11 and was listed as a center when she first started. The label stuck, even if her game didn’t, and that’s a good thing for MIB.

If you play for the Rangers, you run the floor. Period. Their signature full-court pressure defense demands it. In addition to Burke’s gaudy 26.7 points-per-game scoring average, she is averaging 9.9 rebounds, 5.5 steals and 4.2 assists per game. She also has made 35 of the 96 3-pointers she has attempted, good for a 36-percent clip.

Burke’s versatility was one of the draws for Minnesota-Crookston, where Burke will play her college ball.

“I don’t really consider myself a center,” Burke said. “‘Center’ implies that I’m just in the post, and I’m not just in the post. I basically can do anything on the court.”

Buffetta admits it takes a lot of discipline and work ethic to get through his program. It’s tough almost to a fault, but the ones who survive are good ones. Burke is a perfect example of that.

“It’s awesome,” Burke says of the program.

After playing sparingly as a seventh-grader, Burke saw increased action in eighth grade and has been a key contributor since her freshman year. Her production has increased with each season, averaging 17.1 points, 7.1 rebounds and 3.6 steals last season, great numbers but perhaps not enough to make the first cut for Miss Minnesota Basketball, which she did Tuesday.

While Burke is surprised by this year’s scoring average, then again, she’s not. She played even more last offseason than she did the year before, on traveling teams in the spring and summer and after volleyball practice in the fall.

Burke plays basketball every day. Every day.

“You get what you put in,” she said. “We don’t really go on vacation. I’d rather be working on my game, and my parents understand that. In the summer, you occasionally get time off, but I’d still rather be working on basketball and making myself better, because hard work pays off.”

MIB is vying for its eighth straight state tournament appearance, and perhaps, the Rangers will finally win their first state title.

“That’s the goal,” Burke said. “It’s definitely possible.”

Burke thinks back on her journey and remembers how she grew up watching former Rangers star Charlotte Overbye and how she looked up to her. Then came Dakota Winans and the work ethic she set.

“Every year you’d look up to someone new,” Burke said.

And now it’s her.

“It’s definitely surreal,” Burke said. “It’s weird to think about. It’s like a crazy dream. There are some days you don’t necessarily want to be there because you’re sick or tired or whatever, but in the end, you do it, because winning all those section championships and going to state is ultimately worth it.”

PREP NEWSMAKER: MARY BURKE

Prep status: Mountain Iron-Buhl senior

Age: 18

Sports: basketball and volleyball

GPA: 3.5

School activities: National Honor Society, math team

Family: Father, Don; mother Penny; Patrick, 21; Doug, 33

Pets: Dogs Apolo and Mishka and cats Mittens, Benji, Mango and Chaos

College plans: Signed letter of intent to play basketball at Minnesota-Crookston, major in health science and likely go into physical therapy

FACE-TO-FACE WITH MARY BURKE

If I could meet one person — dead or alive — who would it be? LeBron James

One thing people don’t know about me: I love to paddleboard