Area Girls Basketball 2026-27: Every Team, Records and State History
Girls basketball across Galesburg, Monmouth, Knox County and the Lincoln Trail Conference, Illinois
Annawan have won two Illinois state championships. Galesburg employed the third-winningest girls basketball coach in the history of the state for forty-six years. On the girls side, this small corner of west-central Illinois has a record the boys programmes cannot match — more trophies, more finals, and two of them the real thing.
The 2026-27 season opens in November. Here is every area programme before it does.
The fourteen programmes
| Team | Conference | All-time | Pct |
|---|---|---|---|
| Galesburg Silver Streaks | Western Big 6 | 1,103-445 | .713 |
| Wethersfield Flying Geese | Lincoln Trail | 824-493 | .626 |
| Annawan Bravettes | Lincoln Trail | 808-438 | .648 |
| Princeville Princes | Lincoln Trail | 707-556 | .560 |
| Knoxville Blue Bullets | Lincoln Trail | 688-500 | .579 |
| Stark County Rebels | Lincoln Trail | 559-327 | .631 |
| ROWVA/Williamsfield Cougars | Lincoln Trail | 505-452 | .528 |
| Bureau Valley Storm | Lincoln Trail | 392-469 | .455 |
| Galva Wildcats | Lincoln Trail | 331-852 | .280 |
| Monmouth-Roseville Titans | Three Rivers West | 329-254 | .564 |
| Abingdon-Avon Tornadoes | Lincoln Trail | 247-138 | .642 |
| West Central Heat | Lincoln Trail | 188-195 | .491 |
| United Red Storm | Lincoln Trail | 184-416 | .307 |
| Ridgewood Spartans | Lincoln Trail | filed separately* | — |
Annawan won it twice
The Bravettes are the only programme in this coverage area, in any sport, to win an IHSA state championship in the modern era — and they did it twice inside four years.
2013-14: Class 1A champions, 30-4. 2016-17: Class 1A champions, 28-8. Both under Jason Burkiewicz, who also took them to third place in 2012-13 at 30-3. Burkiewicz coached Annawan for fourteen seasons and went 341-92 — a .788 clip — including a 34-1 year in 2017-18.
Three state trophies in five seasons, from a village of about 800 people. There is nothing else like it in this area’s sporting history.
Evan Massey coached Galesburg for forty-six years
From 1978-79 to 2023-24, Evan Massey went 1,018-399 at Galesburg — a .718 winning percentage across forty-six seasons at one school. The IHSA ranks him third in Illinois history for career girls basketball wins, behind only Dorothy Gaters and David Power, and second all-time for wins at a single school.
He took Galesburg to seven state finals and brought back five trophies: runners-up in 1998-99 at 33-2, third in 1995-96, fourth in 1996-97 at 33-2, fourth in 1999-00 at 34-4 and fourth in 2000-01. The 1997-98 and 2002-03 teams qualified without medalling.
Lexi Demott has taken over and has not missed a beat — 24-8 in her first season, then 27-5 last year, with Class 3A regional titles both times. That is 51-13 in two years following a forty-six-year tenure, which is a considerably harder job than the record makes it look.
One footnote for the record-keepers: the IHSA’s own all-time coaching page lists Massey at 1,018-397, while the Galesburg school page lists 1,018-399. Summing his forty-six individual seasons gives 399. We are using the school page.
The rest of the trophy cabinet
AlWood — now half of the Ridgewood co-op — were Class A state runners-up in 1993-94 at 31-1 under Brad Jackson, and went 28-2 the following year to qualify again. They came back for third place in 2009-10 at 32-3 under Bryan Brooks, beating Cowden 54-44 in the third-place game.
Two more programmes reached the state finals without medalling: Stark County in 2006-07 at 26-6 under Scott Paxson, and Cambridge in 1984-85 at 24-3 under Carl Goff.
And one absence worth naming. Wethersfield have 824 wins across 51 seasons, sixteen regional titles and four sectionals — and have never once reached a state finals. Their 2025-26 sectional, won at 24-10 under Todd Hansen, was the programme’s first in twenty years.
Where things stand now
Recent form does not follow the all-time table.
Abingdon-Avon have become the area’s strongest girls programme. Brent Dugan has gone 167-67 since 2018-19, including 30-5 in 2024-25 with a regional and a sectional, and 26-6 last season. Galesburg were 27-5. Bureau Valley went 23-10, their best since 1997-98, reaching the regional final before losing to Newman.
The hardest read is United, who have no IHSA hardware of any kind in twenty-two seasons — no regional, no sectional, nothing — and an all-time mark of 184-416. Yet they went 28-5 in 2024-25, comfortably the best season in programme history, and still did not win a regional. Then 9-20 last year.
And Galva have won one regional title in forty-nine seasons, in 2002-03. Their all-time record is 331-852, a .280 percentage, including six seasons without a single win. We report that because it is true and because the programme has kept going anyway.
The record book has holes
As on the boys side, these figures depend on schools filing results, and several have stopped.
- Cambridge — the table jumps from 1986-87 to a single 2002-03 row and stops.
- ROWVA — last actual record 2015-16.
- Knoxville — nothing since 2021-22, four seasons missing.
- AlWood — last record 2021-22, with four seasons entirely absent from the table.
- Stark County — nothing since 2022-23.
- West Central — two of their three regional titles are filed with no win-loss record at all.
Six programmes are current through 2025-26: Galesburg, Wethersfield, Princeville, Bureau Valley, United and Abingdon-Avon.
The season ahead
IHSA girls basketball practice is scheduled to open Monday, November 2, a week ahead of the boys — provisional, for the same reason we flag on the boys page, and being confirmed with the IHSA.
The earliest area game we have found is Galesburg on November 17. Schedule posting is uneven: Galesburg and Monmouth-Roseville have around thirty games up, Stark County 24, while Annawan currently show one and West Central five.
The state finals are at CEFCU Arena on the Illinois State campus in Normal, under contract through 2029. March 2027 state series dates have not been published.
Send us results
Rosters, schedules, scores, corrections, photographs — send them and they go up with credit. We correct errors the same day we learn about them.
All-time records, championship years and state finishes from the IHSA’s per-school record pages (ihsa.org/data/school/records), corroborated against the IHSA champions page and state finals box scores. Every school total was arithmetically verified against its individual season rows; one apparent state placing surfaced during research turned out to be false on re-reading and was discarded. Coaching and schedule detail from MaxPreps, retrieved September 2026.
