Last night, the varsity girls basketball team lost 50-37 to number one Omaha Skutt Catholic Skyhawks in a hard-fought sub-district final. Subdistricts are a two-game, single-elimination tournament. Winning the tournament gives teams an automatic bid to a Saturday district final.
“We competed,” Varsity Girls Head Coach Wade Coulter said. “We played hard. We controlled the controllable, picking up teammates, communicating, they just executed a little better than us.”
The first quarter started slowly for both teams, except for stand-out Skutt guard Molly Ladwig. Ladwig had 12 of the Skyhawks’ 16 points in the quarter and matched the score of the Griffins as a team.
“She is a great player,” senior guard Addison Larock said. “She has every move in her arsenal, so it’s definitely challenging to keep track of her.”
The Griffins came out with fire in the second quarter, going on an 8-0 run and held the Skyhawks scoreless for the first 3:30 of the quarter. However, that fire was short-lived as the Skyhawks forced multiple turnovers and extended their lead to 26-21 at the half.
“We missed a few shots and had a couple of turnovers,” Coulter said. “There are times you get down on yourself. I thought we did a really good job of picking each other up and playing as hard as we possibly could.”
Defense continued to be the theme in the third and just as the Griffins clawed their way back to a six-point deficit, Skyhawks forward Kamryn Kasner hit a prayer buzzer-beater to make it 40-32.
“We did what we needed to do,” Larock said. “Unfortunately we just didn’t come out on the right side of it.”
The Griffins did not go down without a fight and played until the buzzer. Though they did not win the subdistrict, the Griffins are still in and will likely host a district final on Saturday.
“We are going to get better every day in practice,” Larock said. “Hopefully we see them again in the postseason.”
Griffins fight to the finish in subdistrict loss
Peyton Parker is a senior at Gretna East and this is his second year on the Wingspan staff. He serves as a reporter. Parker originally joined the staff to write stories about sports, but he hopes that he is able to write any kind of story.
Last year, he won first place in Sports Newswriting at the NSAA High School State Journalism competition and third place at the UNO High School Media Conference in Long-Form Audio.
He hopes to achieve victory at State again this year, write great stories and create fun, informative podcasts. In school, he is also involved in National Honor Society, and outside of school, he loves to play video games like Rocket League and Rainbow Six Siege.
Three words, he would describe himself as are funny, handsome and intelligent. His greatest goal in life is to make people laugh and smile. When he graduates, he hopes to write about sports in college and is planning to go to UNL.
See more awards here.
