Lions hoopsters open new gym with a win
by TOM UTESCHER
Springside School’s basketball team had reached the end of its
2005-2006 schedule before the school’s new field house opened last
month, but the Lions were able to arrange a second meeting with league
rival Episcopal Academy on February 16 in order to log some time on their
new court.
Rolling to a 26-9 halftime lead, Springside went on to beat the visiting
Churchwomen, 55-30, recording its first victory in the Lois Fernley Gymnasium
and closing out the season with an overall record of 10-14.
In the official Girls Inter-Ac encounter between the two schools back
on January 6, Springside trailed by just two points early in the third
quarter before EA broke the game open with a 10-0 run. Sophomore guard
Brittany Perfetti rang up 22 points to lead the Churchwomen to a 60-39
victory. Episcopal went on to finish third in the league, and lost to
Notre Dame Academy in overtime in the Inter-Ac tournament semifinals.
Springside wound up in a three-way tie for fifth place with a 1-5 record,
since its two Russian transfer students, Nadya Grishaeva and Ulya Savelyeva,
didn’t begin to play until the tail end of the season.
In the mid-February rematch, Episcopal was missing Perfetti, and with
the Churchwomen’s main outside scoring threat gone Springside did
not have to extend its defense as much to contest three-point attempts.
EA forward Kaitlyn Fallon hit one trey in the opening quarter, but that
was all the visitors got from that range. A day earlier, Springside’s
Grishaeva had been home sick, but she suited up to play Episcopal, and
both she and Savelyeva scored eight points during the first two quarters
to place the locals on a comfortable halftime cushion.
Eighth-grader Kristen Fuery then came on to score 13 of her game-high
16 points after the interlude. She hit four field goals, one of them a
trey, during a 23-8 third quarter for Springside, when Amanda Walker (nine
points total) added a three-pointer and a regular field goal.
Episcopal, which would get a total of 15 points from Fallon and six from
guard Sammi Arbitman, outpointed its host 13-6 during an anticlimactic
fourth period, but there was still a 25-point gap between the teams at
the final horn. Grishaeva and Savelyeva ended up with 12 and 11 points
respectively for the Lions, who also received four points from Nan Weisel
and two from Maeve Koch.
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