Lady Jets are CHAMPS at Parkview Christian Holiday Tournament
December 27 & 28, 2008
By John Cockerill
December 30, 2007
Sterling High School at Parkview Christian Holiday Tournament
Sterling participated in and won the Parkview Christian Holiday Tournament on December 27th and 28th. The participating teams were Parkview, College View, Sterling and Freeman JV.
Sterling squared off against Parkview in the first round and won by a score of 44-29. Sterling jumped out to a quick lead off of some great full court defense. They also pounded the ball inside to Kaylee Agena in the first half. She scored 8 of her game high 12 points to help the Lady Jets to a 23-8 halftime score. The Lady Jets forced Parkview into 24 turnovers with three steals by Kala Weber along with grabbing 24 offensive rebounds as a team, 9 by Kaylee Agena. Coach Cockerill was pleased with his team’s effort. Coach stated, “I thought our ladies came out with some serious defensive efforts, this led to some easy baskets and made their guards work hard all the time. We also had nice scoring balance throughout the team, with nine players scoring.” The Lady Jets were led in scoring by Kaylee Agena’s 12 points with Stephanie Huesman and Courtney VanGroningen each scoring 6 points. Parkview was led by Breanna Borrenpuhl’s 17 points.
In the Championship game Sterling played Freeman’s JV who had beaten College View the night before. Sterling won the game 45-14. Coach Cockerill was worried about playing a Junior Varsity team and not getting the intensity that he would like to see for a Championship game. His worries were soon nullified by a great defensive effort on the part of the Lady Jets, by forcing 37 turnovers. Kala Weber had 7 steals and Courtney VanGroningen added 4 steals. By using full court man to man pressure the Lady Jets jumped out to a 17-2 lead and by halftime had a 27-4 margin. Coach Cockerill stated, “I admit I was worried to start the game, but once I saw the intensity which we were playing I knew I could relax a little. Freeman’s JV played extremely hard, fighting until the very end. We knew they had a group of talented younger ladies, so we were hoping the pressure might get us some easy transition shots and it did.” He also said, “Once the game was in hand it was nice to be able to try some different lineups the second half, put people in different situations and see how they respond. Freeman’s young ladies disrupted a lot of things in the second half, but that is how some of our younger players will learn. This was a tough situation for our team, I mean if we win by 50 points we are running up the score on a JV team and if we only win by 15 then we probably got outplayed, so the final score indicated good effort by both teams.” The second half was played fairly evenly with the Lady Jets outscoring the Lady Falcons 18-10. Sterling had nine players score led by Kala Weber’s 10 points and McKenzie McAuliffe’s 9 points through three quarters. Freeman was led by a trio Brianna Jurgens, Aubrey Banks and Shelby Mason each scoring 3 points.
Kala Weber was named the Tournament MVP and Courtney VanGroningen made the All-Tournament Team. Coach Cockerill said, “ I thought I had three or four players that could have made the all tournament team, but only one was voted from each team. We had a great team effort this weekend and that is something the ladies can take pride in.” The Jets play a pair of home games against HTRS on Friday January 4th and Sidney, Iowa on January 5th.
