Fliers beat rival Perkins on Homecoming

By Scott Black

Enter­prise Sports Writer

clydenews@bizwoh.rr.com

The Lady Flier bas­ket­ball team only had one game this past week and they made the most of it as the crushed San­dusky Perkins 50–27 to gain a share of the San­dusky Bay Con­fer­ence Bas­ket­ball Title Jan. 27 at the Hanger despite play­ing with­out one of their star players.

The win raises the Lady Fliers over­all record to 15–1 and to 11–0 in the SBC. You can catch the Lady Fliers in action Feb. 2 at home against Oak Har­bor where they can win the title out­right. They will also play Willard at home in a non­league game Feb. 7.

“I told the kids that this is why you prac­tice and put in all of that hard work so that you can play in front of a packed house,” Lady Flier Coach John Cahill said. “I thought that we played really, really well. It was just a great way to cap off a piece of the title and I thought we really earned it against a good team. We defended and rebounded like I thought we could all year. They got a lot of shots but we con­tested many of them and we didn’t give up any sec­ond shots.

“I said all along that by the end of Jan­u­ary that we would be really good. We lost one of our best kids and we still found a way to play well. When you look at us out on the floor we start three sopho­mores, a fresh­man and a senior point guard. We’re sub­bing sopho­mores and fresh­men at times. We’re young and I feel like we’re just start­ing to grow.”

Clyde and Perkins played a very tight first half in front of a stand­ing room only crowd at the Hanger before the Lady Fliers put the Pirates in their rear view mir­ror in the sec­ond half.

The game opened with the Lady Fliers jump­ing out to an 8–0 lead but the Pirates woke up and closed the gap to 13–8 by the end of the first quar­ter. Amanda Cahill’s six points led the Lady Fliers in the quarter.

In the sec­ond quar­ter the Pirates outscored the Lady Fliers 13–10 to cut their half­time deficit to 23–21. The Pirates actu­ally took the lead in the game at 17–16 with 4:10 left in the half and pushed their lead to 19–16 at 3:39. The Lady Fliers tied it at 21–21 with 1:53 to go.

In the third quar­ter the Lady Fliers shut the Pirates out 13–0 to jump to a 36–21 advan­tage. Rachael Smet­zler led the Lady Fliers with five in the quar­ter as they got scor­ing from five dif­fer­ent players.

In the fourth quar­ter the Lady Fliers led by 19 with 5:55 to play as they con­tin­ued their assault on the Pirates. They went on to outscore them 14–6 in the quar­ter hold­ing the Pirates to just six sec­ond half points.

The Fliers were led by a trio of girls who were in dou­ble fig­ures. Cahill led all scor­ers with 15 points and she was joined by Han­nah Wadsworth with 10 and Smet­zler with 12. Perkins did not have a player score in dou­ble fig­ures but Kayla Yost and Jor­dan Fra­ley each had eight.

“In the first half we just weren’t play­ing up to our abil­i­ties. I think we were won­der­ing a bit about how we were going to play with­out Bre but in the sec­ond half we just came out and every­thing clicked together and we played really well. Our defense really picked up and we just wanted to win this game for Bre­anne,” said Smet­zler who is the only start­ing senior and the teams “mother hen.” “They all knew how they had to play tonight to win. Kelsey is a really good player and she’s stepped up big for us. Lexi is play­ing really well and play­ing defense and Amanda just does what she does and Han­nah had to step in and start and she did really well.”

Kelsey Michaels had a huge night for the Lady Fliers on the boards as the fresh­man pulled down a game high 12 rebounds and Cahill added eight more. Shan­non Ebert led Perkins with seven as the Lady Fliers out rebounded the Pirates 29–20.

The Lady Fliers were 9-of-13 from the line while Perkins was a poor 2-of-9. Other Lady Flier scor­ers in the game were Michaels eight and Lexi Weber five. Perkins won the JV game 31–29. Jill Miller led the Lady Flier JV with eight.

Posted by Michael Carter on Feb 3 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.