Jaguars Dominate Eagles 35–20
By Jesse Mann
With clear advantages in height, speed, and attitude, the Jaguar varsity girls basketball team scored an impressive 35-20 victory against the Eagles Thursday.
They did this despite the absence of Sofia Sotelo, their legendary scoring machine, who was in La Paz getting a visa to attend a meeting of scholarship winners at Northeastern University, and Giovanna Varalta, their other starting guard, who was stuck in the hospital with a stomach infection,
Sofia and Giovanna would have been quite proud to see their teammates carry on in their absence as if they were there, sweeping away the Eagles with a superb display of passing precision and shooting accuracy. Ana Peredo, Giuliana Varalta, Tania Landivar, Carla Limpias, and Jessica Maureia combined good teamwork with towering height to outshoot, outdistance, and out-dribble the Eagles. They were the oinly five players dressed fort he game, so there was no room for errors.
By the end of the first half the Jaguars had a stunning 17 – 2 lead.
The Eagles came to life in the third quarter, and tried desperately to make up for lost time. In fact they , actually played the Jaguars evenly through the second half. However, the Jaguar's lead proved unerasable, and the intimidating figure of Ana Peredo underneath the basket put an end to many apparent Eagle scoring opportunities.
Despite their many obstacles, the Eagles, led by the indomitable Abby Phillips, resisted bitterly to the last. Towards the end of the fourth quarter several baskets by Dahye Chun and Rebekah Kienzle brought the Jaguar lead back to the 15 points it had been at halftime.
But the clock ran out on them, and when the buzzer sounded, the Jaguars had cemented their first-place position in the rankings with a fantastic 35–20 victory. The game was played on the Eagles court.
Peredo was the leading scorer for the Jaguars, and in the game, with 14 points- Giuliana Varalta scored seven; Carla Limpias and Tania Landivar had six points each, and Maureira had two.
Foor the Eagles, Phillips had six points. Chun, Kienzle, and Javiera Alipaz each had four; and Samia Dajbura had two.
(Jesse Mann is a senior at Christian Learning Center and managing editor of the SCISL website.)
Knight girls win 24-8 in rough contest
By Adriana Guzman
The Varsity Girls Basketball game played by Cambridge and International Thursday afternoon at Cambridge was won by the Knights 24-8.
The excitement of the game was definitely outstanding, Cambridge College’s fans were celebrating every single point they earned. It was very interesting how the Knights managed to score so many times even though both of the teams played aggressively, fighting for every single point. The play was rough and tough for both teams.
The Griffins tried to defend themselves, but could not stop Knight Nicole Fermin, who had an excellent afternoon for the Knights, scoring 14 of the team’s points.
On the other side, Fabiana Zelada was outstanding for the Griffins, scoring all eight of their points, all on foul shots. The Cambridge defense rarely permitted the Griffins to get off a clean shot from the floor. Zelada’s attempts to drive toward the basket were often stopped, but she did pick up foul shooting opportunities and made good on many of them.
The game was very tough through the first half, at the end of which Cambridge led only 10-6. At one point Cambridge’s Amaya Yañez suffered a little injury to her nose.
The game got very exciting for the Cambridge crowd during the third quarter in which the Knights outscored the Griffin eight to nothing. When it finished the score was 18-6.
During the fourth period it was very notable that the Knights had the game won. Fermin added two more baskets, and Josefina Rodriguez scored the Knight’s final basket, making the score 24 to 8.
There was a bit of an argument when the game was about to start over whether players had on proper uniforms. First the International coach complained that Fermin’s red shorts lacked the thin gray and black stripes that the other Cambridge players had on their red shorts, and therefore couldn’t play.
The Cambridge coach countered by noting that one of International’s players didn’t have the small yellow stripe on her blue shorts that he teammates did, and that therefore International didn’t have enough players – the Griffins had only five players in uniform –and would have to forfeit.
The referees initially agreed with Cambridge and signaled that International had forfeited. However, after a half hour of argument, during which both players changed into proper shorts, the game finally got underway. League Commissioner Alvaro Ludueña was contacted by telephone and tried to calm everyone down, saying the stripe issue should not prevent the teams from playing.
(Adriana Guzman is a junior at Cambridge College.)
