Lincoln North Star charts course to school's first girls basketball state championship

LINCOLN - Just a few years into the school's existence, Lincoln North Star has secured its first state championship in any sport: the Navigators (27-1), the top seeds in Class A, overcame #3-seed Omaha North (26-5) 51-35 in the championship game Saturday at PBA, avenging their only loss from the regular season to win a state title for the first time in team and school history.

It's an anniversary year for this sport in this state, with the NSAA celebrating 50 years of girls basketball state championships in 2026, and we've already seen quite a bit of history so far this weekend - Lincoln North Star becomes the third different school to win its first ever girls basketball in 2026.

All signs pointed north for this year's Class A state title, which pit Lincoln North Star against Omaha North. LNS has now qualified for the field for four straight seasons, while Omaha North was in the final eight for the first time since 2002, in pursuit of their first title since 1998.

Here in 2026, the Vikings led by one after one, but the Navigators started to put the clamps on in the middle two periods - LNS outscored ON 26-16 over the middle two frames. Part of that was because Jo Metoyer, the Vikings' second-leading scorer this season, left the game with an ankle injury in the second quarter. She got a rousing ovation from the Omaha North fans when she returned in the second half, doing her best to gut through obvious discomfort.

"When she came out I thought that shifted things a lot. You could see when she came back in, the roar for Omaha North. I think that did take some momentum from them, for sure," Lincoln North Star head coach Tommy Johnson said. "I also thought we smelled blood in the water a little bit defensively, and we really really amped it up. And the girls, they do that on their own. It’s not us making a call or anything, it’s them making plays and making things happen."

North Star forced Omaha North into 21 turnovers, scoring 20 points off those turnovers, and held the Vikings to south of 30 percent from the field. Meanwhile, North Star seniors Kendall Anderson and Ani Leu combined for 34 points in their final high school games, helping steer the Navigators to a 51-35 victory in the Class A title game.

"We started at the bottom, and it takes a lot to get where we are. I think we put in so much, so many hours and so much time into this sport, and I’m just so thankful that I got to do it with Kendall and the rest of my team," Leu said.

"It means a lot for our school – we have yet to get a banner, so it’s a great feeling that we get to bring that back for North Star," said Anderson.

This game was a contest between schools from the state's biggest towns, but everyone involved testified to just how meaningful this experience was to their local communities.

"The experience has been so joyful," Omaha North head coach Michaela Dailey said. "To have the city behind us, to have OPS behind us, our community behind us...Throughout this entire season, it was just, ‘Let’s continue to make history.’ This is something big that the whole community needs. And these girls worked their butts off to get to this moment, and despite us losing, we are proud that we got them here, and we are proud that our community is rocking behind us."

"I thought they set the stage for an amazing Class A girls basketball state championship," Johnson said. "We both did our parts, we both made it here, and that’s what we said before tipoff, we both made it here, and we love that we did this for the basketball community here in Nebraska – two public schools going at it was amazing."

Leu led all players with 20 points (7-of-11 FG) plus ten rebounds for a double-double in her final game, while Anderson hit four threes to score 14 points. Metoyer led the Vikings with 15 points (5-of-10 FG) despite playing only 19 minutes due to her injury; T'Niyah Wilson-Smith added six points, ten boards and four assists.

The Vikings were the only team to defeat the bracket's top seed in the regular season, but this time the Navigators were able to course correct, and sail on to their first ever girls basketball state title.