Sky Chappell
In the midst of a challenging season, the Sweet Home High School girls basketball team continues to display resilience and determination.
Despite recent losses, including a 27-40 defeat at home against the North Marion Huskies (9-10) on Jan. 29, and a 12-63 loss away against the Stayton Eagles (12-4) on Feb 1, the team remains focused on improvement and development.
The game against North Marion was a contest where the Sweet Home team came prepared and eager for the challenge. According to Coach Erika Evans, “We came as prepared as we could be and are excited to play North Marion again in a couple short weeks. We battled, but at the end of the day, we couldn’t string all of our battles together.”
Erika emphasized the team’s plan to focus on limiting turnovers and adopting more scoring-centered mindsets in their next encounter with North Marion. Regardless of the score, the SHHS girls had a higher field goal percentage, 40% on the away teams 30%. Sophomore Addy Vannice scored 7 with a field goal percentage of 50%.
The following game against Stayton highlighted the team’s effort to implement a more aggressive offensive strategy. “We focused on having scoring mindsets between Monday and Thursday games this week and it showed up in the amount of shots we put up in Thursday’s game against Stayton,” Erika remarked.
Despite the challenging scoreline, Evans highlighted a positive aspect of their defensive strategy, specifically their success in limiting Stayton’s starting forward to just 2 points throughout the game.
“Lots of good things in this game for sure,” Evans added, pointing out the improvements and takeaways from the encounter.
The SHHS girls will be back home Feb. 8, at 5:30 p.m, playing against the Newport Cubs (3-14) and Feb. 12 at 5:30 playing against Philomath (14-3).