The Bainbridge High varsity girls basketball team won convincingly at home Friday, Jan. 3 against the visiting Rainier Beach Vikings.

The final score was 51-5.

The tone of the decidedly one-sided game was set early in the first quarter, which ended with the Spartans ahead 20-0. Freshman guard Taylor Tye led the initial offensive efforts, scoring seven points in the first quarter alone.

The win brought the team’s overall season record to 4-4.

“You have to come in with the same mentality every game,” said Spartan Head Coach Nicole Hebner. “No matter how it goes, you can always find a way to make yourself better.”

Despite the team’s initial success on the scoreboard, Hebner refused to let the players rest on their laurels.

“The first couple minutes for us were pretty sloppy, I thought,” she said. “And then, once we settled down, we were able to pick up our energy level and play better defense.”

Hebner said that as of late, the team’s practice sessions have been purposely less intense in an attempt to keep the game in perspective for the players.

“We’ve just done a lot of play,” she said. “I think that we get so caught up sometimes in where exactly we’re supposed to be on the court that we forget that we just need to play basketball.”

“The main stress this overall season is that we need to play as a team in order to be successful,” Hebner said. “We can’t have just one person go out there and look good on offense, we can’t have one person put all the effort out on defense and nobody else do anything. Team play has been our big emphasis.”

Hebner also commented on the relative inexperience of the majority of the team’s players, and said that they will only continue to improve with time.

“We’re basically a brand-new team from last year,” she said. “We lost 65 percent of our scoring, so it’s nice to see these kids, these young kids, step into different roles and try and do something.”