Lady Warriors struggle with three losses
Playing three games in five days is by itself a tough task. Losing all three of those games is even tougher.
But while the Marion High School Lady Warriors dropped contests against Hoisington, Hillsboro, and Sterling, head coach Daryl Enos managed to find a silver lining in his team's performances.
"This has been a good week, in that we've played three full games," Enos said. "Not that the minutes were always are best, but we were making the effort to do something every minute of the game."
"We've gotten contributions out of everybody we've played," Enos continued, noting that nine Lady Warriors tallied points against Hoisington, eight scored against Hillsboro, and seven contributed points against Sterling.
"We're finally starting to gel, we played some ball this week," said Enos.
In the Hoisington contest Jan. 23, the Lady Warriors found something they've been missing most of the season — the will and ability to come back from a large deficit.
Trailing their hosts 34-24 at the end of the third quarter, the Lady Warriors rallied to within one point with six seconds remaining, and had a chance to win, but Lindsay Hett's last second shot was off the mark. Hoisington won, 38-37.
"We stepped up the defense, and we got better at it," Enos said, pointing out that Hoisington scored only one field goal in the fourth quarter.
Lindsay Hett and Julia Zeiner scored eight points each for the Lady Warriors, and Erin Carr added six.
Hillsboro entered Friday's contest at Marion High School Gymnasium ranked sixth in Class 3A, but Marion gave the Lady Trojans a strong fight in the first half.
The Lady Warriors trailed throughout the half, but kept Hillsboro within striking distance by maintaining single-digit deficits until seconds before halftime. Hillsboro went to the locker room leading 29-19.
The Lady Trojans squashed any hopes of a Marion upset in the third quarter, outscoring the Lady Warriors 16-3 by taking full advantage of their greater height and speed.
"We're just outmatched inside against most teams," Enos said.
Marion stepped up its performance in the fourth quarter, playing mostly against Hillsboro's bench players, and succumbed to the Trojans 55-39.
A flurry of three-pointers in the fourth quarter put Carr atop the Marion scoring chart with 14 points, and Zeiner chipped in nine.
A trip to Sterling Saturday for a tilt against the Lady Black Bears found the Lady Warriors once again on the short side of the final score, 53-48.
The game was competitive throughout, with the teams exchanging the lead several times throughout the first half. A Sterling trey in the final minute gave the Lady Black Bears a 24-20 halftime edge.
As in the Hillsboro game, the Lady Warriors found the third quarter to be their undoing, allowing Sterling to edge out to a 10-point lead, 35-25, at the 4:26 mark.
Marion crept back to within four, 50-46, on two Kayley Heerey free throws at 3:04 in the fourth, but went scoreless the rest of the game.
Heerey led Marion in scoring with 12, followed by Zeiner with nine, and Carr with eight.
