Champions at last!

FORT RECOVERY — Katie Howell heaved a 3-pointer from the left corner but it missed the mark.

Brooke Kahlig pulled down the rebound, found some open space in the opposite corner and dribbled the few remaining seconds off the clock to seal the win.

Nearly three decades after their last title, the Indians are conference champions.

The Fort Recovery High School girls basketball team held off the New Bremen Cardinals 47-41 Thursday at Fort Site Fieldhouse to earn a share of the Midwest Athletic Conference championship, the sixth in program history.

“It’s so exciting,” said FRHS senior Val Muhlenkamp, who finished with a team-best 12 points. “I feel like I’ve been waiting for this for such a long time. I’m just so happy.”

She’s not the only Tribe player or fan who has been waiting; it’s the first conference title for the Indians since winning three in a row — the stretch included two state championships as well — from 1989 to ’91.

“This is something special,” said FRHS coach Holly Gann, whose team dropped its first conference game of the season and then won eight in a row. “This is something special not only for me and my family, this is something special for the community.”

Thursday’s win didn’t come easy for Fort Recovery (17-5, 8-1 MAC), which shared the title with Marion Local, although it appeared as if the Indians might cruise after nearly 12 minutes of play.

The Indians led 28-8 with 4:37 to play before halftime, but a 10-1 run by the Cardinals (13-9, 3-6 MAC) trimmed the margin to 10 points at the half.

Fort Recovery pushed the advantage back to 14 three minutes into the second half, but a 12-0 run, including consecutive Madison Cordonnier 3-pointers, brought New Bremen as close as two, 36-34, just 23 seconds into the fourth quarter.

Cordonnier, a junior who has committed to play at the University of Findlay, the same school as Muhlenkamp, led all players with 18 points.

After an Alli Vaughn jumper from near the free-throw line, Kira Berke of New Bremen and Kahlig split free throws to keep it at a four-point difference, 39-35, with 3:37 to play.

That’s when Fort Recovery’s defense, and Kierra Wendel on offense, stepped up to create a bit of a cushion.

The Indians forced the Cardinals into five consecutive turnovers, and with the ball near the right wing Wendel drove to the left and pulled up for jumpers just inside the stripe.

She made them both, and suddenly the Indians were on top 43-35.

“That’s still being aggressive,” Gann said of Wendel’s two buckets. “I think we had more composure late in the game than a lot of other teams. They didn’t get nervous. They didn’t start complaining at each other. We knew what we had to do and those were huge.

“For (Wendel) there, she doesn’t get to sit down a lot so she pushed through … she was very tenacious and just got the job done. She wasn’t afraid and I think that was it. She was willing to take a risk and sometimes this is a game of risks. One mistake isn’t going to lose us the game.”

Fort Recovery built its lead in the first half by going 10-of-12 (43.5 percent), but fell off coming out of intermission as it made just four of its 23 shot attempts — a clip of 21.7 percent — in the final 16 minutes.

Muhlenkamp said the key during that time was not getting upset despite things not going well offensively.

“We just knew we had to keep going,” she said. “We just had to pick up the intensity and just be energetic.”

Bertke put the Cardinals on the board with the game’s first basket, a 3-pointer, but the Indians responded with 10 points in a row, including four each from Vaughn and Muhlenkamp. Muhlenkamp caught a bit of fire early in the second quarter as she hit consecutive 3-pointers — one from each of the wings — and Vaughn drove to the hoop for two to make it 21-7. Wendel got in on the scoring with five consecutive points ahead of two Kahlig free throws that made it 28-8.

Despite having that lead minimized to just one possession in the span of 12 minutes, Gann was still pleased with the outcome.

“The bottom line, it comes down to my philosophy … I don’t need to win by 100 I just need to win,” she said. “I think there is mixed emotions now with that concept. I just stay humble. A W is a W. It doesn’t have to be pretty because it’s still a W.”

Since its last conference title, Fort Recovery has finished as the runner-up on four occasions, most recently the 2015-16 season. It was fourth, third and seventh in the three years since.

But now, the Indians are again at the top.

“It’s just great because we work so hard for it,” said Muhlenkamp, who was an eighth grader when the Tribe was last runner-up. “We’re finally getting recognized. It just feels good.”