Having been to three straight Division I state final fours, Fairmont’s girls basketball team is loaded up for a shot at doing what those other great Firebirds teams couldn’t: Win a state championship.

That’s a lot of pressure for any team at the onset of a high school basketball season. But Fairmont has at least five proven reasons to back that title talk: seniors Chelsea Welch and Alona Skipper, juniors Kathryn Westbeld and Makayla Waterman and sophomore Shea Morgan.

All have been starters since their freshman seasons. Fairmont has fallen to Twinsburg in the last two state finals.

“It sits with you,” said Fairmont coach Tim Cogan, who has groomed the area’s best D-I program over the last 13 seasons.

“It’s something that for our players and coaches and community we’d all love to bring home to Kettering. It stays with you and is definitely something that we’re striving to accomplish.”

Others have also taken notice. Just this week Fairmont ranked No. 19 in USA Today’s Super 25 Poll.

This could be the season Fairmont was poised to have last year. However, Waterman, like Westbeld a 6-foot-2 inside force, blew out a knee in the summer of 2011 and never fully regained effectiveness.

That coincided with her replacement, 6-3 Emma Havener, also suffering a season-ending knee injury last January.

Fairmont (24-4) still cruised to another Greater Western Ohio Conference Central Division title and landed in another state title game. But followers couldn’t help wonder what if. Healthy now, that answer could come at this season’s end.

“Right now we’re healthy and we’re hungry,” said Cogan.

College coaches from many of the nation’s top programs regularly visit Fairmont practices. Westbeld and Waterman are the main draws. Ohio State is among the NCAA programs to have offered the pair scholarships. Neither has verbally committed.

Welch, a spirited defender and effective penetrator, recently signed with Duquesne.

“You name them and they’ve been in the gym,” said Cogan, listing head coaches and assistants from Notre Dame, USC, Michigan, Ohio State, Duke, LSU and Florida.

“It’s very humbling. They like what we do. They like the fact that the kids come prepared when they go to the next level.”

Fairmont’s non-league strength of schedule is at an all-time high. The Firebirds will play Illinois power Bolingbrook in the Bragging Rights tournament at Walnut Hills on Dec. 29. On Jan. 26 defending D-III state champ Africentric visits. The next week five-time D-II state champ Hathaway Brown visits Fairmont.

Finally, Fairmont is matched against Colorado state power Regis Jesuit at Berlin Hiland’s annual midseason tourney.

“We’re playing the best of the best,” Cogan said. “It’s great. It’ll definitely prepare us for our journey.”