The exercise was designed to increase endurance, but it ended up building something else.

“We did this drill in the preseason where you have to lift your hands above your head and run around the gym for five minutes,” Talawanda girls basketball coach Kim Richter said. “It’s awful. But it was my greatest moment with this girls.”

With nearly a minute to go, Richter’s daughter Ana, an All-Ohio junior forward, was in pain and saying she wasn’t going to make it. Unsympathetic, Kim yelled out that if one person fails, everyone starts over.

At that point junior guard Megan Richardson caught up to Ana, grabbed her arms and held them above her heard. Within seconds, everyone was holding everyone else’s arms until time expired.

“That’s the one thing we do best, is pick each other up, and always have each other’s backs” Ana said.

Kim insisted that wasn’t the point of the drill. But in future seasons it likely will be.

“It was the greatest moment for us as a team,” Kim added. “Because I was like, ‘That’s exactly what we’re going to have to do to be successful.”

And success certainly has followed in the form of a 20-0 record, a Southwest Ohio Conference championship, the No. 1 tournament seed and a No. 3 state ranking in Division II.

The 20 wins ties the school record, which the Braves can break Saturday at home in their regular season-finale.

It all has been a continuance of what began last year in Kim’s first season as coach, when Talawanda went 18-6 and won its first sectional championship since 1985.

“Everything was so different last year from what I had been doing in the past, and it was hard,” Richardson said. “But we eventually got comfortable and started trusting the coaches – and Ana, because she was new, too – and this year we’ve just built on what we started last year.”

Ana leads the team and the SWOC in scoring at 17.4 points per game, and she also leads the Braves and ranks second in the league with 9.6 rebounds per contest, while Richardson averages 12.8 ppg.

Seniors Brilyn and Bristyl Webb – two-thirds of a triplet tandem, along with brother Tripp, who stars for the boys team – are combining for 7.1 assists per game in their fourth season as varsity players. And sophomore Darby Glabb and freshman Sarah Beth Richter combine for 9.4 points and 9.4 rebounds at center.

“Our main goal as a coaching staff is to love these girls, and their goal is to love each other,” Kim said. “And from that, we’ve been blessed to have an awesome season.”