The Wolves were at the door.
They even got inside and did some damage, but they left with tails tucked after tangling with the Spartans Tuesday, a game which resulted in a 51-40 season debut win at home for the Bainbridge High varsity girls basketball team.
BHS led early and managed to keep the visitors’ late-game gains proportional to their own offensive efforts, ensuring the win.
“That was a good game,” said Spartan Head Coach Nicole Hebner. “It was a lot of fun.”
The Spartans led 5-0 with 6:49 left to go in the first, and it was looking like a really lopsided season introduction until Sequim managed to sink a free throw to avoid the shame of a first-quarter shutout.
The game entered the second quarter 16-1 BHS.
The Lady Wolves made some small gains and the home team’s scoring efforts were more or less locked out, and the second quarter ended 18-5 BHS.
The third quarter was good to the Spartans and saw the majority of the game’s action. BHS pulled ahead and maintained a solid lead throughout, entering the game’s final stanza with a 35-17 lead.
The fourth quarter saw a bit of a run by the Wolves — which Hebner later credited both to them finally finding their stride and the Spartans losing a bit of steam — but again BHS kept the gains in check and moved up along with their opponent. There was consistent back-and-forth action almost each minute of the final quarter (40-21 at 5:25 remaining, 41-28 at 4:33, 43-30 at 3:24, and so on) with each team’s latest point answered by yet another from the other, before the time finally ran out and the Spartans emerged victorious.
The early lead, Hebner explained, is not the assured victory it would appear, and said that the Spartans were careful not to become too complacent at any point.
“Like I was telling the kids,” she explained, “you can start really strong and it’s really easy to get confident. But, they even brought it up, they said when things started to get tough they could feel it. They start getting tense.”
Getting tense when under pressure, Hebner said, was the expected reaction from such a young team early in the season and the Spartans had done very well in coping.
“We’re young,” she said. “We have three seniors, one of them wasn’t here tonight, and as long as we can play and play with a lot of energy and play with a lot of heart, as long as we can continue to do those things — I think we’re really going to surprise people.”
“They found their rhythm in the fourth quarter,” Hebner said of the visitors. “We found ours in the first. Unfortunately, theirs was a little bit late for them to kind of make that comeback. But, if we play the way we did tonight, I think we’re going to have a pretty good chance.”
This year’s varsity squad features, in addition to the three senior players — Paige Brigham, Kayla Buchmeier and Sydney Gibbs -—four juniors and two sophomores.
The sheer abundance of returning players is a critical leg up, especially early in the season, Hebner explained.
“It’s pretty awesome,” she said. “The best part about it is that they all like each other. So we don’t have that kind of one kid who’s going to bring drama. They all like each other, they all get along, they want to play with each other.”
Camaraderie, Hebner said, is something that can’t be taught by even the best of coaches, but it makes for a significantly stronger team on the court.
“I think, a lot of times, they’re the teams to be scared of,” she said.
The team is led on the court by three co-captains: Buchmeier, Brigham and Katie Usellis.
Especially impressive so early in the season, Hebner said, was the team’s overall fitness level.
“I think we’re going to use our athleticism to our advantage,” she said. “We’re really athletic. We’re fast. We’re small and we’ve got some kids that are pretty long. We aren’t scared to put pressure in peoples’ face and get on the floor and get loose balls.”
The team’s next home game is slated for 6:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 12 against Garfield High.
