The third and final installment of the Jefferson City-Helias winter sports rivalry will be played tonight when the Lady Crusaders host the Lady Jays in a basketball game at Rackers Fieldhouse.
"It's always a fun game, there will be a lot of energy," Helias coach Doug Light said.
And Light should know, having been a head coach on both sides of the rivalry. It will be a first for first-year Jefferson City coach Kristie Douglas-Wiley.
"I know it's going to competitive," Douglas-Wiley said. "It's going to be a battle."
Douglas-Wiley got a glimpse of the rivalry last week. She has a son who plays on the Jefferson City boys team that defeated Helias in double overtime.
"I got a little taste of it with the boys game, that was amazing," she said. "The crowd was just electric. What a great atmosphere for high-school basketball, and I hope that we can have a little bit of that ourselves with the girls (tonight)."
Jefferson City (11-8) enters tonight's game having won seven of its last eight games.
"The first thing you see is how athletic they are," Light said. "It used to be if you did a couple of things, you could shut them down. It's not like that anymore."
Jefferson City is lead in scoring by junior teammates Megan Foster and Nicole Martin.
"Martin and Foster are a handful and the kids around them have gotten so much better," Light said.
Helias (10-5) is topped in scoring by junior Luci Francka, who tossed in 25 points in Friday night's win against Fulton.
"Doug's going to have them coached-up and ready to go," Douglas-Wiley said. "It's going to be a battle, and we know that. We're going to have to definitely work hard and outwork them."
The freshman game begins at 4:45 p.m. The junior varsity will follow at 6:15 p.m., with the varsity to start around 7:45 p.m.