Standout junior focusing on leading her team to victory

By Robert Williams

Editor

Frazee-Vergas High School junior Jayden Sonnenberg became the holder of the girls basketball program’s all-time leading scorer record on Friday, Jan. 17 in Park Rapids. Sonnenberg scored 33 points against the Panthers to break the record formerly held by 2025 Hornet Hall of Famer Alexis Tappe.

Tappe’s mark stood for a dozen years at 1,693 points. Sonnenberg has the remainder of the season, the playoffs and all of next season to continue adding to the record. She is on pace to be the first Hornet girls player to eclipse 2,000 points and will set a mark that will likely stand longer than Tappe’s record did.

“It’s very exciting,” Sonnenberg said. “It was a goal for this year at the beginning of the season. Looking back on it, it kind of happened so fast. Oh my gosh, I’ve got the record already, but taking a moment to look back on it this is a pretty big achievement especially only a junior and having another year left so it was very exciting, a good confidence booster and it also motivated me to want to get more and to want to keep putting points up.”

Tappe, now an assistant coach at Missouri Valley College, was a source of encouragement during Sonnenberg’s chase for the record.

“Alexis was a big help; I texted and called her a lot,” said Sonnenberg. “When she came home during winter break we went out for lunch and talked to each other a lot. She’s just been great, very supportive of me and what I’m doing and she’s just a really great outlet for me.”

The Hornets are 12-9 on the season, one win away from matching last year’s total of 13 victories. It is the first time in 10 years that the Hornets have posted double figures in victories in back-to-back seasons.

“It’s been good; we’ve had a couple rough patches,” said Sonnenberg. “The start of the season we were facing some injuries. The last couple weeks we’ve had some sicknesses, four girls with influenza, two girls with knee injuries. With already having a small team that has been a big adversity for us to face, but I think it’s only making us stronger. We’re such a close knit team, one of our biggest strengths is we’re emotionally connected and we all get along. That’s a big thing that helps us.”

Sonnenberg and the Hornets have also posted big road wins this season where they have not normally come, beating Perham 62-60 at the Hive early in the season and recently taking down Dilworth-Glyndon-Felton by 16 points in Glyndon.

“We’re finally starting to get our groove,” Sonnenberg said. “We’ve had a couple big wins. Taking down D-G-F last Friday was a big one for us.”

The Hornets last road victory in Glyndon was in 2013, Tappe’s senior season, and the last visiting victory in Perham was in 2020.

For Sonnenberg, those wins are far more important than the scoring record.

“I am more of a team-focused person,” Sonnenberg said. “I would rather score zero points and have us win than score all the points and have us lose.”

That being said, breaking the record has been somewhat of a relief for the Hornet star.

“It was a weight off my shoulders and a flood of emotion came through; it was fun,” Sonnenberg said. “I’m glad we got it over with in the first half; it was a close game and we were ready to focus on getting the win.”

Sonnenberg has faith in her teammates and has seen what the Hornets can do when everyone is firing on all cylinders. As the regular season winds down, she is hoping to see that come together for a push in the playoffs.

“When we play well, we’re unstoppable,” she said. “In my eyes, there is no one in our section that can stop us. I think it’s more of consistently playing well, consistently getting in the groove of things, that would be our only issue right now.”

The regular season ends Feb. 21 and the time the team spends between then and now is going to shape their playoff potential.

“We need to work on that in practice too, bringing that intensity every single day and to every game and staying consistent,” she said. “It’s not about the better team, especially in the HOL. It’s about mentally being there and who is going to go out and fight the longest and the hardest.”

While Sonnenberg has been creeping up on Tappe’s record, she has made a lot of noise on the track and field team’s state relay teams. However, track, and running, are not her favorites. In fact, she said she uses track to get ready for her AAU basketball schedule in the summer.

“I’m not a track person at all,” she laughed.

Sonnenberg has already received recruiting offers and her future plans are definitely to play basketball at the next level after graduation.

Hoops is a family thing for the Sonnenbergs.

“My dad, basketball was his favorite sport in high school and my brother plays basketball too. I grew up in the gym. Of all the sports I play, basketball was just my favorite. It wasn’t until sixth grade, COVID, March 16 was the day. We all got sent home and over COVID I was like basketball is something that I love and that’s when my natural talent kind of ran out. Everyone has natural talent and at a certain age people just catch up to you.”

Even at such a young age, Sonnenberg internally pushed herself to improve.

“I was going to take this seriously and I found a lot of motivation and a lot of drive to get better,” she said. “Every day in my driveway I was doing stuff and I’d wake up at 6 in the morning and go for a run and lift—just trying to get better.”

By seventh grade, she was concentrating on being more consistent.

“I’ve got to wake up every morning and I’ve got to put the time in—that’s when I took it seriously and it’s made me love basketball so much more and be more focused and driven,” she said. “Finding the motivation every day to be better, getting stuff like the record, my 1,000th point, and these other records throughout the season, I want to get the next one. I want to be better.”

Sonnenberg is in a place nearly all high school players never get to reach. She made her varsity debut in seventh grade, a season of learning as the Hornets struggled through a 3-win season.

“We won three games and that sucked,” she said. “It really did and it was hard, so seeing us grow over the years has been really special for me because I’ve been a part of the last five teams. I don’t want to be that losing team anymore. I don’t want to go into the next conference game and it’s going to be a blowout. That’s the drive I try to portray to my teammates. We’re better than this. We’re up there with Perham and we’re up there with Pelican. We can do it. We have the ability to do it. We just have to push ourselves and put the work in and be focused.”

Sonnenberg’s team leadership is all about competitiveness and improving. She and her team are changing the perspective of Hornet basketball.

“It is a big responsibility for us because Frazee isn’t known for being the best basketball team around,” she said. “That makes it even more special when we are and I’m seeing a different drive with my teammates than I have before. It’s just so great to see that in people that I go to school with, not just AAU teammates, it’s the people that are here that are part of my family. It’s so special.”

Playing AAU has helped Sonnenberg improve skillwise and become accustomed to a faster game pace. The biggest differences are the intense rivalries in high school are missing in AAU, along with the lifelong friendships of high school teammates.

“It’s a different drive,” she said. “AAU is great. You build skill and you get out there in front of coaches. You’re playing with such great girls. There are two different sides to it. I love playing with those girls; I love playing with the talent I get to and having the coaches and opportunity to play against girls I may not know of. It’s going out and just playing. 

“But then, you also don’t have that passion for the game. You don’t have—we’re playing Perham tonight. We have to play well. We have to go out and beat them. We have a long rivalry.”

The Hornets’ all-time leading scorer is making the most of her time on Frazee courts and helping to spread the message to younger players. The Hornets have eight graders playing C-team this season and practicing with the varsity squad. 

“It’s a great opportunity to go talk to them, see how they are and kind of  set the standard,” she said. “For a lot of years we weren’t a good team and practices weren’t challenging and we didn’t play well. Coming into our practice and seeing how it needs to be. You need to push yourself. You need to get better and respect your coach. Setting that standard is important to me. When I leave, I need those girls to do the same—to keep this program going. I want Frazee to be the new team that everybody doesn’t want to play. We need to instill that standard and expect more out of them so they get in that groove when they get older.”

When Sonnenberg broke the school record in Park Rapids, she was able to share a moment with those younger players from the floor.

“I’ll never forget turning around and looking up in the stands and seeing all those little girls that are in elementary school with their posters and the banners,” she said. “That was so special. It was a big eye-opener for me to see how the community was standing behind me.”

Sonnenberg also spends time Saturdays with the Bumblebee youth basketball program.

“It’s awesome to see those little girls,” Sonnenberg said. “Just last weekend, I had a girl wear the same hairdo as I do and she made a sign for me when I got my record. It’s something that makes me want to work harder. I’m very fortunate to have such a great community behind me.”

Sonnenberg also credits head coach Trey Heinsius, who took over the program her freshman year, with creating a positive environment and changing the team’s style of play since his arrival.

“It was very different,” she said. “Coming to practice the first day and seeing someone who had confidence in us kind of took us off guard. Having that confidence in us was such a big thing. We can be a good team. We can be a good program. 

Sonnenberg said Heinsius upgraded the team to playing a more modern style of basketball.

“Trey brought in transition we get the ball and we’re going,” she said. “We’re going to go score. That was a different style of basketball that we hadn’t seen before. It helped us. The different pace and that’s something that he brought. Playing like that was so much better for us.”