CHARLESTON- No matter how hard you try, no one will ever forget the historical season put together by the 2025-26 Greenbrier East Lady Spartans basketball team.
This year’s version of the girls in the green and gold finished undefeated and claimed the AAA state title for the second championship in the sport since 2012. It’s also the first time a team from East has gone undefeated and capped the year with a trophy.
East defeated Hampshire 64-36 in the quarterfinals, Keyser 52-37 in the semis, and in the title game, beat East Fairmont 57-51 to complete the road to perfection.
And they did it on the 50th year anniversary to boot.
This team knew from the start of the season the potential for this moment to be reality. After last season ended in the state semis against Wayne, the Spartans learned a valuable lesson and with the majority of the team back for this year, got right back to work.
Each player served a purpose on this roster–from the end of the bench to the starting five–and they dealt with adversity along the way when it popped up out of nowhere. Sandy Banton, a senior who had started all season and played a critical role for her team, suffered a season ending leg injury on the last play of regulation against Morgantown in the Battle for the Springhouse Tournament. For most teams, that would have eliminated any chance of something special, but for Greenbrier East, they just inserted fellow senior Kala Waller–who typically played some, not a great deal–into the lineup and they never really seemed to miss a beat. In fact, Waller played her best basketball of her career these last few weeks and became a player that coach Jim Justice relied on.
But the same can be said for all of them.
Everyone knew the star backcourt tandem of two first-team all-staters, Kennedy Stewart and Ava Workman, who are/were the Lady Spartans two leading scorers. However, when watching this state tournament in the state’s capital city, Greenbrier East does not hoist a trophy at the end without two players, Mackenna McClure and Hannah Fuller. McClure filled the stat sheet in the opener against Hampshire and played her scrappy, tough kind of game the whole time, and Fuller, all six-foot-three of her, scored 19 points and pulled down 17 rebounds in the championship game. For the weekend, she finished with averages of 11.6 points and 14 rebounds per game and although she deserved it, she was left off of the AAA all-tournament team.
But McClure, Workman, and Stewart landed on that list and Stewart actually won the MVP of the entire thing. And all that mattered to all of them in the end, was that TEAM trophy.
With the victory, the Spartans and all their fans will say a heartfelt goodbye to the seven seniors who gave them memories that will last forever. Stewart, McClure, Waller, Fuller, Banton, Regan Rink, and Kiki Bagut have put on their Lady Spartan uniforms for the final time.
A new era will begin in 2026-27 with Workman leading the way and a lot of youngsters sharing the court with her. Several of those youngsters got to sit on the bench and experience firsthand what a 2026 championship looks, feels, and sounds like.
And there’s no doubt that all of them will get to work soon to hopefully experience that feeling again with them leading the way next time.
Congratulations to the Lady Spartans players and staff on this once in a lifetime experience.
