St Mary’s girls down BEA
By Kenny Varner
WINGATE – It wasn’t quite the season home opener that the Bald Eagle girls basketball team was quite looking for as they went head to head with visiting St.Marys High School Wednesday night in front of its home crowd.
The effort was there as the young Eagles gathered numerous rebounds and forced a huge amount of turnovers but the shooting on the night was way off, causing the Lady Bald Eagles to fall to the Lady Flying Dutch Girls 44-16.
Defensively, the Eagles kept their opponents from picking up a double-digit scorer.
However, St. Marys got 9-point efforts by Michelle Bauer and Rachel Armanini. They also collected an 8-point night from Caitlyn Bankovich to round out the leading scorers for the Lady Dutch.
“The coaching staff has to do a better job of preparing the team,” Bald Eagle Area coach Jim Josefik said afterward.
Bald Eagle was led by two players who finished with three points each, they were Julia Cingle and Alexis Bucha.
McKayla Maynard was strong underneath capturing 11 boards of the team’s total 33. Teammate Bucha pulled down six in a losing effort.
In the first quarter, the Bald Eagle defense played its best, allowing the Lady Flying Dutch girls to only nine points while its offense produced a two foul shots from Kaylee McCaslin and one from Bucha.
But in the second quarter St. Mary’s offense started to come alive.
Armanini got the scoring started putting her team up 11-3 on a jumper.
Julia Cingle cut the lead in half at 11-6 thanks to a 3-pointer that hit nothing but net.
From there the visiting offense took over and outscored the Eagles the rest of the half 12-2.
St. Mary’s defense was smothering and refused to give the Lady Eagles any kind of long look at the hoop or to look for a teammate to pass it to.
When the first half came to a close, the Flying Dutch held a comfortable 23-8 advantage.
Things went from bad to worse for the Eagles in the third quarter as its shooting woes continued as the team’s shots were close but couldn’t seem to fit in the net.
At the same time, St. Mary’s was able to grind out 10 more points and headed into the final stanza leading 33-8.
With nothing but pride on the line for the Lady Eagles, the team scraped and scrapped their way to their highest out put in the contest, scoring eight.
But once again, St. Mary’s offense was just a little better as it scored 11 points en route to the 44-16 victory.
The Eagles lost a heartbreaker in the junior varsity contest as it fell in overtime 37-33.