Eighth Grade Girls Lose Close Game at Colby
On Thursday, January 10th, the junior high girls basketball team opened their 2008 schedule at Colby. The girls began practicing in the morning over a month ago and have been practicing at 7:00 AM each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The girls seem excited about the new season. Coach Morrow's comments about the 8th grades games are found below.
B Team Loses to Colby
Comments from Coach Morrow: "The first game of the year is always a tough one for our young players, and this year was no exception. Colby is a very talented team which shot extremely well all through the game. Colby’s good shooting, coupled with our inability to score consistently, made for a very tough first outing. As always, however, I’m sure we’ll be much better by the end of the year.
Though the final score did not reflect it, this year’s seventh grade girls are much further ahead than seventh grade teams have been in our program in years past. Since the beginning of November until Christmas break, nearly every team member (both 7th and 8th graders) met nearly every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to practice at 7:00 a.m. The Colby game showed that we knew how to run our offenses and generally execute better, but scoring was still a problem for us. First game jitters were a big part of that, but we still need to learn how to shoot better and do more of the smaller things which are so important to being a competitive basketball team."
Scoring: Aly Northrup, 2; Clarice Neitzel, 4; Laura Brink, 3.
A Team Lost to Colby: 21-22
Coach Morrow's Comments: "This was a very good game from beginning to end. We led after the first quarter, gave up the lead by halftime, and fought back from a 5-point 4th quarter deficit to give ourselves a very good chance to win the game. With 16 seconds left, we had the ball at half court and had an opportunity for a last second shot, but we missed it and had no time left to get the ball back. It was an exciting game, and having the opportunity to beat Colby is not particularly common in junior high basketball.
All in all, the improvement these ladies have made since last year’s season opener against Colby (which we lost by 31 points) is the reason for their competitiveness. They have worked to improve over the summer and worked well in the morning practices. Games like this one, which are won or lost because of a few good plays or unfortunate mistakes, should spur us on even more to improve and try to put ourselves in a good position for the league tournament."
Scoring: Jenna Hill, 11; Jacquelyn Ketzner, 2; Kaitlin Figgins, 6; Trista Orth, 2.
