Minot High senior guard Maggie Fricke returned from a torn ACL to average 16.5 points per game and help guide the Majettes to both a WDA regular season title and a WDA Tournament championship. Mike Kraft/MDN

Hoisting the WDA Championship banner high above her head after helping the Minot High girls basketball team capture their third region tournament title in the last four years, senior guard Maggie Fricke wasn’t going to bottle up her emotions.

For Fricke, Saturday’s victory over Bismarck Century in the WDA Tournament championship game was more than just a single moment, but rather a culmination of more than a year’s worth of hard work just to get back on the court.

“It felt amazing,” Fricke said. “I didn’t think I was going to be able to get to play this year. It was kind of up in the air as to whether I was going to play this year, so being able to be with my team and hold that banner up with those seniors means a lot because I’m glad I got to play with them another year and it shows how much hard work I’ve put in to being able to be on that court.”

At last year’s WDA Tournament, Fricke was reduced to a spectator role on the Majettes’ bench as the Patriots claimed the region title over Minot High, ending the Majettes’ quest for a three-peat. Fricke played the same role at the state tournament as well, offering encouragement and advice, but unable to step out on the court and contribute. Without Fricke on the court, the Majettes settled for third at state, falling to Century in the state semifinals.

Fricke’s absence on the court was the result of a torn ACL in her left knee that cost her all but three games of her junior campaign. It was the same knee she partially tore her ACL in the latter part of her sophomore season. She elected not to have surgery on the partially torn ACL, allowing her to be available at the start of the 2024-25 season.

While electing not to have surgery put her in position to be ready for the start of her junior season, it came at the risk of potentially tearing the ligament again. A partially torn ACL typically takes about three months to heal when coupled with physical rehabilitation, but it can still take nine months to a full year before it can handle the wear and tear of high-impact sports.

That nightmare scenario became reality on Dec. 14 in a home game against West Fargo Horace while harmlessly going up for a layup. Fricke said she felt a pop and a crack and that her knee shifted out of place. She didn’t need the doctor or an MRI to tell her what she already knew: her ACL was torn and her season was over.

“I could feel it right away,” Fricke said. “I was screaming in pain and I knew my season was done after that because you can kind of feel when you’ve torn your ACL. It was disheartening just knowing that I had just come back from one the previous year.”

Surgery to repair her torn ACL took place roughly 1.5 months later in January and she got right to work on rehab, beginning physical therapy the following day. The lead up to surgery was especially excruciating, with the pain levels being at their highest in the first couple weeks.

“The first two weeks are the hardest,” Fricke said. “It’s really brutal. I felt like I was on my death bed, but it does get easier, but the mental side gets harder.”

Fricke still spent time around the team during that season, being on the bench for home games as well as the WDA and state tournaments. But her physical therapy sessions were during practice times, so she wasn’t with the team as much as she would have liked, but at the same time she wanted to put herself in position to get the opportunity to play with the team for her senior season.

While the physical pain from suffering such a catastrophic injury is bad enough, it pales in comparison to the mental torment that comes with being sidelined, Fricke said.

“It is a lot of the physical aspect, especially if you’re going through that surgery, but I think knowing you can’t be out there even though you would do anything to do it, even if you physically can’t, is the toughest part,” Fricke said. “When you get down to the five, six, seven months after surgery, you start to feel normal, but still physically can’t go out and play, so having to just watch and sit is one of the hardest things mentally. It’s disheartening, but you have to keep pushing through and fighting through it knowing you’ll be able to come back.”

It’s not the first time the sport she’s loved since kindergarten has provided frustrations. One of her first memories with basketball was one of frustration. At a young age when she was trying to determine whether to prioritize basketball or swimming, Fricke was prompted to attempt to dribble the ball through her legs, something she wasn’t able to do at that particular moment. She walked away and nearly quit the sport on the spot, but returned 10 minutes later on her own accord and attempted the feat once again. That’s when she knew basketball was the sport for her.

Minot High coach Jason Schwarz was more than happy that Fricke elected to choose basketball over swimming and has coached her at the varsity level since she was called up as a seventh grader. She came off the bench in the beginning, but developed into a starter before the end of that season. She’s been a full-time starter since, growing in every aspect of the game.

“She’s everything you want in a player,” Schwarz said. “If you were to get a piece of clay and try to mold a basketball player with all the intangibles, she has a lot of those qualities with the time that she puts in outside of organized practice to make herself better. She just lives for basketball. She lives to get better at basketball. She understands the game so well. There’s a lot of things she can do. She can drive to the basket. She’s an unbelievable 3-point threat. She held the record for free-throw percentage early in her career. Before the injury, she was our best defender and she’s probably our second-best defender right now. She still gets tough assignments. She has a nose for the basketball.”

While far from ideal, last year wasn’t all bad news for Fricke. She did accomplish her dream of getting the opportunity to play college basketball when she verbally committed to play at the University of North Dakota in February and officially signed her letter of intent in November. Fricke worried that her history of knee injuries might cause hesitation amongst colleges when recruiting her, viewing her as injury-prone and a potential risk. But the trust that the UND program had in her was a big sticking point for Fricke when making her decision.

Both Fricke and Schwarz said that UND has been hands off when it comes to managing the Minot High guard’s time on the court. Instead, those decisions have been made by the medical staff and Fricke.

The Majettes were extra careful when bringing her back into the fold. She began practicing with the team from the beginning, but could only participate in non-contact drills until she was able to pass certain physical testing. Schwarz said he has been in this situation before with Avery Lunde when she tore her ACL the first time. He said they rushed her back too quickly the following year and Lunde wound up tearing her ACL again soon after.

Fricke missed the first six games of the season as she waited to get medical clearance to return to game competition. That approval came Jan. 2 in a home contest against Williston. Fricke played 11 minutes that night, scoring 15 points on 6-for-11 shooting, knocking down a game-high three 3-pointers in a 70-45 victory. Fricke said she was nervous, with her heart racing and hands clammy, but the standing ovation she got from the crowd helped calm her down.

Schwarz was happy to have his floor general back, as was the rest of the team.

“She’s the voice,” Schwarz said. “She’s the leader. She’s the glue. She’s the X-factor and when you put her in, she fills all those roles. Yes, we have other players that sort of fill those roles, but she fills all those roles the best. She’s the mother of the team. We have that great team back, but the difference this year is we have that X-factor and she is that and she fills so many different roles. She puts the glue together for our defense and is the leader when you need that leader in a clutch moment, someone to handle the basketball in that pressure situation.”

Fricke is second on the team in scoring at 16.5 points per game and is averaging 5.5 rebounds and 3.6 assists per game. She finished with at least 10 points in 17 of 18 games, netting a season-high 28 points in Minot High’s first meeting with Century this season. She has five games of 20+ points. She contributed 47 points in three games at the WDA Tournament to help the Majettes capture their ninth WDA title in program history.

Success on the court is nothing new for Fricke. She guided the Majettes to a state title as an eighth grader in 2022 and was named tournament MVP. Fricke has been named to the all-state team three times and Minot High has captured the WDA regular season crown the last three seasons and won the WDA Tournament in 2023, 2024 and 2026. Dating back to the 2021-22 season when Fricke was an eighth grader, the Majettes are 117-17 overall and 82-8 in West Region play, never finishing below second place in the conference standings.

Fricke is the second-leading scorer in program history behind only teammate Leelee Bell. She eclipsed 1,000 career points as a freshman and currently sits at 1,915 for her career, placing her in the top 10 all-time in Division AA/Class A. If she were to surpass the 2,000 career point mark at the state tournament, Fricke would become just the ninth player in North Dakota girls basketball history to accomplish that milestone. But with the state tournament approaching, personal accolades are the furthest thing on Fricke’s mind.

“It’d be a nice milestone, but I’m really just happy to be back on this floor,” Fricke said. “I didn’t think I was going to get to, but being able to be back on that court was a bigger milestone than anything. We just really want to focus on getting these three wins.”

Minot High’s quest for a second state title with this crop of seniors opens with a quarterfinal contest against Grand Forks Red River on Thursday, March 12, at the Bismarck Event Center at 1 p.m.

The Roughriders have given the Majettes trouble in the past, especially at the state tournament. The two teams have not met since the 2023-24 season, but they matched up twice that year and twice the year before. Red River has won three of the four matchups, winning the third-place game at state in 2024 and handing the Majettes a loss in the quarterfinal, 50-43, in 2023. The Roughriders are the last team to beat the Majettes in the opening round, as Minot High has reached the semifinals the past two seasons.

The semifinal round has been the Majettes’ kryptonite the last two seasons, seeing promising years end two wins shy of their ultimate goal. Both losses came at the hands of WDA opponents. Bismarck High knocked them out of title contention in 2024 and Century did the same in 2025.

“We just have to stay focused on ourselves,” Schwarz said. “I don’t know what the right answer is for that because we certainly were playing really well the first game of the tournament the last two years going into the semifinals. I felt as confident going into those two games as I had all season long and then we just did not perform to the best of our abilities. We didn’t shoot the basketball really well in those two games and when you get to the state tournament, there are no off games. Everybody’s good. Every game is tough. But everybody else is in the same boat so we can’t just say that it’s just us playing the hard teams. We have to find ways to create easy baskets if we’re not shooting well.”

The Majettes are 7-1 against this year’s tournament field. The lone loss is to Mandan, who they could potentially meet in the semifinal if both teams win their quarterfinal contests. The alternative would be a matchup with defending state champion West Fargo Horace, the only team from the East Region who the Majettes played during the regular season. The Majettes won 73-61 without Fricke. The tournament field is comprised of the exact same eight teams from a year ago with Minot High, Century, Mandan and Legacy representing the West Region and Fargo Davies, West Fargo Horace, Fargo Shanley and Grand Forks Red River representing the East Region. The seedings are the only aspect that has changed.

Having fallen short of their goal of a state title each of the last two years and being only a few weeks removed from their only loss of the regular season, Schwarz doesn’t worry about his team heading into the state tournament overconfident.

“We know that there’s no reason for us to go in overconfident because we’ve been in this position before,” Schwarz said. “Maybe that helps us because maybe if we had won one of the last two or even the last two, it would be very easy to come in overconfident, and we’ve been beat over the last few weeks by Mandan. We feel like we’ve used that loss to correct some things and wake us up a little bit. We’re trying to use that to our advantage as well.”

The state tournament marks the end of an era for the Majettes, as its core of four seniors will play their final weekend of basketball together. Fricke, Bell, Ariana Rood and Eve Knutson helped fill up the trophy case at Minot High while also collecting a number of individual accolades as well.

Bell is Minot High’s leading scorer and only the third female basketball player in the state to amass more than 3,000 career points. She is also the leading rebounder in Division AA/Class A history with more than 1,300 rebounds.

Knutson averages 6.6 points per game and leads the team in 3-point shooting with at least 20 attempts at 39.5 percent. She’s grabbed 103 rebounds this season, second behind Bell, and dished out 66 assists. Defensively, she is second on the team in blocks with 20.

Rood led the team with 78 assists, is third on the team with 89 rebounds and averages 5.5 points per game.

As for Fricke, two ACL injuries in two years isn’t what she envisioned when she joined the varsity program as a seventh grader, but exiting with two state titles would make for the perfect ending.

“It would be amazing to go out with a bang, especially when I got to do it my eight-grade year,” Fricke said. “Some of these girls on this team never got to be in a state championship or have a ring and that would mean a lot because our team has faced so much adversity through injuries and upsets. I know as a team we can do it.”