In a game where the Lady Hawks were simply outmatched and outplayed by the opponent, the visiting Royals went on to win convincingly, 75-8.
The Hawks come into this game after a tough loss at Kamiak High School against the Kamiak Knights, and wanted to get a win at home against their rival, the Lynnwood Royals. The only issue with that was that, according to USA Today’s girls basketball national poll, the Royals are ranked 15th in the whole nation.
“Our mentality wasn’t really to go out and beat this game,” senior guard and captain Riley Zucker said. “Our mentality was to go out and beat ourselves; to play in the way that shows that we have heart and we just wanted to go as hard as we could.”
Likewise, Coach Wilde also didn’t worry about the Royals’ ranking or how good they were said to be.
“Realistically I don’t like to look at rankings, or who anyone is,” said Wilde. “We are such a young team, we just need to worry about ourselves.”
In the first quarter, the Royals showed off why they were ranked nationally through their suffocating pressure defense and good basketball IQ play-making. The score was 1-32 at the end of the first. This put the Royals on pace for 128 points by the end of the game if they kept up the scoring effort.
The rest of the game was very similar to the first quarter in the Lady Hawks’ defeat.
Although the Hawks got blown out by the opposing Royals, there are some good things that came out of this game.
“I think we had a good learning lesson,” Zucker said. “Not every team is going to be like Vashon Island. Teams are going to bring out pressure and we have to learn how to face that, and how to play like a varsity team.”
Through this defeat, the Hawks realize that they might have soul searching that they need to do.
“I think the biggest thing we need to improve on is that every single girl on the team needs to find their heart, why they play basketball, why they think that they’re the best ones out there on the court because once they find that, we are going to be a great team,” Zucker said.
The Lady Hawks so far have been devastated with injuries with junior guard Claire Zucker being day-to-day and senior star Samantha Romanowski out for the whole season. The result of that is a very young team with only one senior leading it.
“It’s tough,” Wilde said. “I’m glad that it’s Riley [Zucker] that’s our lone senior, and eventually Sam [Romanowski] was going to leave, it just happened to be one year earlier than anyone thought, but life is going to go on. We just have to deal with what we have and get better from it.”
The Lady Hawks are now 1-2, looking to get back to .500. Their next game is away at Cascade High School against the Cascade Bruins (0-2) on Wednesday at 7:15 pm.
