Brady’s Day Three Cheesehead Challenge Notes

<span data-preserver-spaces="true">The final day of the Cheesehead Challenge continued the trend the day before, with plenty of talented kids playing against each other. A handful of kids deserve recognition for what they did. I’ll do that now.</span> <strong><span data-preserver-spaces="true">[player_tooltip player_id="209594" first="Katelyn" last="Odem"]</span></strong> <span data-preserver-spaces="true">The rising Homestead junior doesn’t need to score a single point to help her team win a game. She plays with a ton of passion and overall emotion. Odem puts her body on the line for loose balls, and she creates extra possessions in every way imaginable. On Sunday, she even played with more aggression offensively than I remember seeing her play with in the past, and it showed how good she could be on both ends of the floor.</span> <strong><span data-preserver-spaces="true">[player_tooltip player_id="209592" first="Sarah" last="Aleknavicius"]</span></strong> <span data-preserver-spaces="true">Whenever I see the Grafton guard/wing play, I feel like she leaves something on the table. She never does too much. Aleknavicius knows what she’s capable of and sticks to her role. However, she played with a ton of aggression in the 8 A.M game. There wasn’t any hesitation in her game or passiveness. The rising junior knocked down shots and got to the basket repeatedly.</span> <strong><span data-preserver-spaces="true">[player_tooltip player_id="419332" first="Taylor" last="Schwalenberg"]</span></strong> <span data-preserver-spaces="true">On a team full of intriguing kids, Schwalenberg is the most interesting to me. The Kettle Moraine Lutheran guard will never do anything that harms the flow of a game. She defends scholarship-level kids at a solid level, and she keeps the ball moving. I rarely see her take more than a dribble per touch, but she fires the ball all over the court. Schwalenberg may not be one of the most sought-after kids in the state, but she’ll make any team she plays on better.</span> <strong><span data-preserver-spaces="true">[player_tooltip player_id="156097" first="Reagan" last="Pahl"]</span></strong> <span data-preserver-spaces="true">Not many kids have had as good of an AAU season in Wisconsin as Pahl. She’s a strong and athletic lead guard who reads the floor well and keeps her assignment in front of her. Pahl has also had a few games this AAU season where her shooting has buried teams in a few minutes. She is one of the few kids who both have few off games and can blow an opposing team out on a personal 12-0 run.</span> <strong><span data-preserver-spaces="true">[player_tooltip player_id="209618" first="Gracie" last="Gopalan"]</span></strong> <span data-preserver-spaces="true">I’ve seen the reigning Division 3 state champion point guard play a ton and have talked to her on a handful of occasions. In every sense of the imagination, Gopalan is a talented, positive, competitive, and effective player. Every time I’ve seen her playing or otherwise, she always seemed to have a smile on her face. However, she got taken out of mid-air, finished the play, and scored without getting a foul called, and her facial expression when she backpedaled down the court after getting up was something I hadn’t seen before from her, but I loved it. The college coach I was next to when this happened saw it too, and that side of her is something I rarely see as visible like that, but it’s a good excuse to highlight her competitiveness. She’s one of the most competitive kids you’ll meet, and just because she’s one of the most pleasant kids you could ever meet, don’t forget she’s a perennial winner who isn’t afraid of any challenge or kid you put in front of her.</span> <strong><span data-preserver-spaces="true">[player_tooltip player_id="156099" first="Camryn" last="Nies"]</span></strong> <span data-preserver-spaces="true">The Platteville guard was one of the first kids I ever covered in person for PGH, so it was nice to see her play well for Wisconsin Elite. She is an accomplished shooter and showed a lot of ability as someone who can play as a lead guard. Nies is a multifaceted threat with the tools to have a solid final nine months of high school.</span> <strong><span data-preserver-spaces="true">Sage Miskel</span></strong> <span data-preserver-spaces="true">I knew Miskel had a ton of talent, but after seeing her play up with 24s as a fill-in, a Division 1 commit and college coach, both told me how impressed they were with what she was doing on Sunday. She looked like she belonged with some of the best 24s in Southeast Wisconsin. The 2026 guard left a lot of good impressions this weekend.</span> <strong><span data-preserver-spaces="true">[player_tooltip player_id="329594" first="Alexis" last="Charbonneau"]</span></strong> <span data-preserver-spaces="true">The future McFarland Spartan plays on a talented 2026 Let it Rain team and is one of the best shooters I know of in her class. One of the things that I look for is how good shooters miss. Shooters like Charbonneau miss long or short, never wide. That means that she’s consistent and has put in the work to get to that point. Plus, her teammates constantly looked for her. Which means they trust her too. You can see a kid hit a lot of shots, which I’ve seen the 2026 wing do, but how a shooter’s teammates play when they miss shots is just as important to tell how lethal a kid can be a shooter, her teammates always look for her. Charbonneau will help McFarland with her ability to shoot alone next season.</span>