LOUDONVILLE — Rare air is all around the Loudonville girls basketball team.

The Redbirds are in the state tournament for the first time since the 1992 squad finished as Division III state runner-up.

Those ‘Birds beat Versailles 61-48 in the state semifinals before falling to Coldwater 63-47 in the championship game at St. John Arena in Columbus.

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I thoroughly enjoyed covering that group, which had just won the state volleyball tournament a few months earlier, and played for a softball state championship the previous spring.

Still, these Redbirds are very different. This is a basketball-dominant group, and they have a transcendant talent in senior Corri Vermilya, who will play at defending Division II national champion Ashland University next year.

Ohio’s reigning Division III Player of the Year was third in the 2023 Ms. Basketball voting and is a finalist again this winter.

This year she’s averaging better than 27 points per game and her band of teammates has shown a special tenacity for defense that carried coach Tyler Bates’ bunch to a Massillon Regional championship on Saturday night.

Larry Phillips is the manaaging editor of Source Media Properties.

They have been overwhelming foes all season, up to and including a resounding 40-14 regional final blowout of New Middletown Springfield at Massillon Perry High School.

The 5-foot-9 Vermilya was limited to a season-low seven points (and 13 rebounds) in that game, but Loudonville never blinked. Senior guards Jena Guilliams and Sophia Spangler, combined with junior post Alesha Felix, and freshman swing player Mya Vermilya to fill in the scoring gap.

The ‘Birds’ smothering defense allowed only nine points in the first half, and just five points in the second half. It was no contest, and in the Elite Eight, that’s rare air, too.

But don’t look for a result like that this week in Dayton.

In fact, seventh-ranked Loudonville (26-2) will be an underdog in Thursday’s 11 a.m. state semifinal against No. 6 Waterford (23-3). The Wildcats boast 6-foot-4 junior center Avery Wagner, who was a huge contributor, literally, to Waterford’s 2022 state championship run.

Head coach Jerry Close has won two state crowns in his career with the Wildcats (2016 and 2022).

Waterford advanced to the Final Four by outlasting second-ranked Berlin Hiland 53-51 in the Pickerington Regional championship game. The Wildcats trailed by 11 at halftime, yet clawed back into it behind ferocious defense that choked off the Hawks in the lane.

Should the Redbirds survive that state semifinal test, perhaps an even stiffer foe awaits in what would be a state title tilt on Saturday morning.

No. 1-ranked Fort Loramie (26-2) challenges fourth-ranked Convoy Crestview (26-2) on Thursday at 1 p.m. in what is being billed as an instant classic.

Nobody said this was going to be easy. But it’s the hard that makes it great.

It has all the makings of a very special memory for the Loudonville community.