Girls’ basketball defeated Dougherty Valley 51-48 at home on January 16.
According to freshman point guard and shooting guard Zoe Del Rosario, the game plan was to push the pace. “Usually we approach this kind of game with a good attitude and we always want to hustle and cheer everyone on because we’re always supportive. For Dougherty Valley we have to be quick on our feet and just be really motivated.”
Senior Kaylyn Murray scored the first points of the game and helped secure a 15 point lead at the 6 minute mark. Coach Art Thoms said, “It ended up making a big difference. We came out playing really well doing a lot of the things we worked on at practice. We started doing really well. So yeah, it ended up making the difference. The first quarter was really good.”
Dougherty Valley did manage to claw their way back, after multiple personal fouls committed by the Cougars. The score was 18-10 at the end of the 1st quarter.
In the 2nd quarter, Dougherty Valley went on a 10-2 run, pulling even with their hosts by the end of the 1st half.
The last several minutes were back-and-forth. Campolindo called a timeout with 3:32 to go and then stalled on their possession.
Dougherty Valley coach Doug Vanderhorst said, “We got off to a little bit of a slow start we spotted them 14 points in the first three minutes, but I’m really proud of the effort that we made with the battle back and it was close, I think we won the last 3 quarters.”
“It’s really tough to come back when the opposing team has that many,” Vanderhorst explained. “Campo’s very good, very skilled. They move the ball well, they shoot the ball well. But like I said, such a high score so early in the game. You can’t control that.”
Thoms said, “I thought Kaylyn Murray played really well. She does always a great job on defense. She’s our team captain and leader. She gets girls and plays and she scored in the first half really well.”
According to Del Rosario, practice has been rigorous in order to develop useful skills for the season. “We do a lot of conditioning and we’ve been doing a lot of running and when we had open gyms beforehand we would shoot a lot and we would work on all these different things that you would do during a game. We incorporate skills that we would need in practice and in games,” she said.
Campus supervisor Suzie Frederich, who attended the Dougherty Valley game, said, “Wonderful girls; they started out kind of slow but they’re getting it together. Their defense has really picked up. Look at all the rebounds tonight.”
“It’s been a challenging blend of having six seniors and five freshmen and one junior but as far as where we are as a team I’m most proud of the progress we’ve made in the locker room and at practice. We are really tight this year and that was a big challenge the seniors have really made great effort to bring the team together and we have a lot of fun together we had a team dinner last night at my house and the girls just had a blast,” Thomas explained.
Del Rosario added, “The seniors are super supportive of us and it’s nice to play with people who are older than you. It’s new but we’ve grown accustomed to each other. It’s fun to play with them and they have a lot of varsity experience, and you kind of learn from them. They set really good examples so it’s a really nice opportunity. We’re really supportive, we cheer each other on even after mistakes, and when we have small victories we celebrate that and we acknowledge it and each other.”
According to Thoms, he needs his team to work on “just cutting back on turnovers. We don’t have a lot of experienced ball-handlers and just cutting down on turnovers is the main thing.”
Thoms’ goal for the season is to get beyond the DFAL. “The girls are working hard to try to get into NCS,” he said.