By Ted Waddell
JEFFERSONVILLE — December 25, 2001 – The host Sullivan West Lady Bulldogs girls varsity basketball team easily defeated the Lady Spartans, a younger squad from S.S. Seward by an 80-24 margin last Thursday night in an OCIAA Division IV game.
At the half, the home team headed off to the locker room with a 42-4 lead.
Double digit scorers for SW (4-0, 3-0 Division IV) included Tiffany Hauser (24 points) and Aileen Semenetz (12). For the Lady Spartans, Katie Akrop reached double figures, netting a team-high 14 points..
Jen Ackermann had 13 rebounds and eight points for the home team; Erin Bose had six assists; and Hauser racked up eight rebounds and five steals. As a team, the Lady Bulldogs dished out 28 assists, and 11 out of the 13 players added points to the scorebook.
“All kinds of people made all kinds of contributions,” said SW Coach Ron Bernhardt.
Stats from the free throw line: SW was six of 14 (43 percent), S.S. Seward was two of six (33 percent).
“We were outclassed,” S.S. Seward Coach Chris Knittel said. “They’re obviously a better team and very dedicated to basketball . . . we’ve got a lot of kids who are very dedicated to soccer, and that shows.”
Knittel wasn’t too thrilled as the scoreboard continued to rack up points for the Lady Bulldogs, and his hoopsters failed to make plays.
The Lady Spartan coach said he looks for a bright spot every game, and the key to eventual success is linking up several bright spots for a win.
“Then we might give somebody a run for the money,” he said. “Katie Akrop was on fire tonight,” he said. “She was our bright spot this evening.”
In the second frame, Akrop was deadly from outside the arc, taking her team out of single digits on the scoreboard.
“We have no place to go but up,” said Knittel. “We’re building every game, but it’s going to be a struggle.”
According to Bernhardt, the win over S.S. Seward (0-5, 0-3 Division IV) was “prototypical of the season so far”, in that the Lady Bulldogs jump out to an early lead, and then he is faced with trying to level them off so as not to run up the score – while at the same time letting them play up to their potential. And that can be a rather delicate balancing act.
“Our mission is to play as well as we can play,” said Bernhardt. “We’re trying to improve each time out . . . we can’t tell the girls not to play hard, so we mix up our rotation and sub every four minutes.”
This year’s crop of Sullivan West hoopsters is made up of players from the Jeffersonville-Youngsville and Delaware Valley campuses. No one from the Narrowsburg campus tried out for the team this season.
“I’m very pleased with their effort and unselfishness,” Bernhardt said of the Lady Bulldogs. “They’re all champions in the way the make sacrifices for each other and the team.”