By Ted Waddell
LIVINGSTON MANOR — January 10, 2003 – If Raggedy Ann were a sportswriter, she might have felt right at home watching Wednesday night’s OCIAA Division V girls’ varsity basketball game between the Livingston Manor Lady Wildcats and the visiting Fallsburg Lady Comets.
In fact, a fan in the stands had a large Raggedy Ann doll up there in the bleachers. But the poor stuffed doll was apparently struck wordless at the sloppy play evidenced by a whopping total of 35 fouls as both teams repeatedly got in each other way to the bucket.
Manor (8-1, 4-0 OCIAA) jumped out to a 10-4 lead in the first quarter. In the second period, however, the Lady Wildcats outscored Fallsburg 26-4 to take a 36-8 lead into the locker room.
After that, it was a walk in the park for the home team hoopsters as they went on to win, 47-15.
The Lady Comets were still coming off a high, as a couple of weeks ago the hard-pressed squad won their first game since the 1998-99 hoops season by defeating Chester, 32-25.
For the 2002-2003 season, Charisse Jamroz took over as coach of the girls’ varsity team after serving as jayvee coach for two years. She replaces veteran varsity helmsman Lee Smassanow.
“I thought we could have hustled more tonight,” she said. “We were totally out of sync . . . we have a much higher scoring potential than 15 points.”
According to Jamroz, Fallsburg (1-6, 1-4 OCIAA) came close to reaching one of its goals, which was to hold the opposition to under 35 points.
“We have a chance to be more productive, and make a change in our past [won-loss] record,” Jamroz added.
Livingston Manor Coach Andy Taggart summed up the game as “very sloppy on both sides.”
“Neither team played particularly well,” he said.
Taggart’s take on the season?
“We’ve been very fortunate with the scheduling,” he said. “We’re off to a tremendous start, and we’ve won some close ones. I never thought we’d be 8-1 at this point, but time will tell.”
According to Taggart, the Lady Wildcats’ next three games will determine how good they really are. Manor is slated to host traditional rival and fellow OCIAA Division V team Roscoe tonight; host Liberty next Tuesday evening in a non-league game and travel to Tuxedo next Thursday for a non-league contest.
“We’ve got three big games coming up,” he said.
Manor’s Jennifer Wright was the only player to make it to double digits in the game against Fallsburg. But on the way to scoring 10 points, she was sidelined with an ankle injury, thus joining the temporarily disabled list of Jennifer Taggart and Charlene Vail.
Four Manor players – Carrie Lewis, Alys Mann, Jen Taggart and Elizabeth Weickum – each netted seven points in the contest.
Felicia Strauss led the Lady Comets with six points.