With only six girls on the roster, Colony’s Crest Lancers held off the taller, more numerous Wildcats of Marmaton Valley in a gripping, high-energy Friday night game.
The contest was a bucket-for-bucket affair for the first two minutes. But then, around the five-minute mark, the Lancers decided to catch fire: junior Regan Godderz took the ball coast to coast for an uncontested layup; freshman Aubree Holloran hit a midrange jumper off the dribble; Godderz again, from the elbow; Camryn Strickler this time, with a two-pointer off the glass.
In a bout of bad timing, it was at this point in the quarter that the team from Moran decided to suddenly deflate. The Wildcats, who started the game with such energy, were out-rebounded, out-hustled, outplayed—and soon found themselves on the wrong side of a Lancer’s scoring spurt. The tally moved quickly to 10-4. The momentum was Crest’s. Marmaton Valley head coach Sherry Bagshaw called for a timeout.
There are two kinds of coaches: the quiet, contemplative coach, the coach who urges her team on with a nod and a fixed look; the one who paces the sideline with folded arms, maybe whispering some epiphany in a player’s ear when he or she approaches the bench. That’s one kind of coach. And then there’s the other. These are the belters, the bellowers, the high-decibel artists, coaches whose passion sloshes from their cup with every bad call or misfired pass. Bagshaw is very much the second kind, a coach of real vim and vigor.
And so it was in this key that she addressed her players in that first-quarter huddle, giving the Marmaton Valley girls a solid earful.
It worked. The girls, their eardrums still ringing, turned the pep talk into points, going on a mini tear that put the hometown Lancers on a temporary backfoot. The Wildcats came within two points (12-10) of the Lancers toward the end of the first quarter and brought the game within three (34-31) going into half.
The outstretched play of 5’11” junior Patricia Outlan, whose soft touch in the post kept the game at a winning distance for the Wildcats, was instrumental. She would end the night with a Wildcat high of 16 points.
But the Lancer trio of Godderz, Strickler and Jewell Armstrong — who notched 17, 16 and 16, respectively — proved an onslaught too potent to reverse. When the final buzzer sounded, it was the Lancers on top.
Final score: 58-50.
BOYS GAME
Chafing from an upset against Northeast-Arma earlier in the week, the Crest boys basketball team — taking their lead from the Crest girls basketball team — delivered a New Year’s wallop to the Marmaton Valley Wildcats Friday night.
Crest scoring whiz Hayden Hermreck led all scorers on the night with 29. With his long frame and quick first step, Hermreck is a difficult assignment for any defender. While he didn’t find the bottom of the net on all, or even the majority, of his shot attempts Friday, he connected enough times to tilt the balance of the game in Crest’s favor early on.
The Lancers sealed their win with a final score of 58-42.
“It’s kind of funny,” said Lancer head coach Travis Hermreck after the game. “Overall, we shot the ball poorly tonight. … But you know what? We played with effort and we played together, and the boys brought a little bit of mental concentration tonight. You know, a lot of our [poor] shooting was because we were just amped up. But I’m glad that we brought the effort that we did, because if we’d have played like we did before Christmas, this team would have beat us. That’s not a bad team.”
