Cheboygan girls surrender huge second-quarter run, fall to Gaylord in home opener

CHEBOYGAN – Walter Hanson knows it’s going to take some time to implement his system and get his players to play the way he wants them to.

Basically, he understands his team is going to go through some growing pains in the early stages of this season.

Thursday was one of those tough nights for the first-year Cheboygan varsity girls basketball coach, whose team suffered a 50-15 non-conference home loss to Gaylord.

“The one and only thing we wanted was effort tonight,” said Hanson. “You can have the best offense in the world and best defense in the world, but if we don’t have the effort to go with it, it doesn’t matter. If we get the effort, we can build from there. I thought we had a pretty good effort tonight."

Despite a sloppy first quarter, the Lady Chiefs (0-2) kept themselves within striking distance of the Lady Blue Devils (2-0) after junior forward Bella Ecker scored a tough basket inside to cut Cheboygan’s deficit to 12-8 early in the second.

After that, however, it got ugly for the Chiefs, who surrendered an 18-0 run and trailed 30-8 at halftime.

“I think fatigue set in a little for us,” Hanson said. “We just didn’t have a lot of practices to get our legs underneath us. With the volleyball players and other sports going on, we didn’t get the necessary cardio needed under there, and when you keep doing the same thing over and over, the opponent’s going to figure it out a little bit.”

Meanwhile, the Blue Devils found their offensive mojo and stepped up their defense, which keyed the big second-quarter spurt.

“Well, we aren’t the best 3-point shooting team and we tried to shoot ourselves out of it by shooting threes,” said Gaylord coach Kelli Parker. “I think we were zero of 12 in the first quarter, so any great offense has to go through the paint, and so I just kept telling the girls to get in the paint, so they did just that.

“Defensively, we picked up our defense and had some good buckets.”

Balanced scoring was vital for the Blue Devils, who saw eight players net four points or more in the game. Fueling Gaylord’s attack was senior Alexis Kozlowski, who finished with a team-high nine points, while teammates Kennedy Wangler and Addison Wangler both helped out with seven points apiece.

“We were talking in the locker room about Jim Harbaugh and how he talks about his players, and how (Bo) Schembechler was always like, ‘The team, the team, the team,’ so I said, ‘You guys, it has to be about sacrifice, I don’t care who gets points,’” Parker said. “I think it’s the big thing with kids these days. Everybody likes to score points, that’s fun, but we all have to sacrifice for the team.

“I was proud of them tonight; it was very good.”

For Cheboygan, Ecker and junior Kinsey Carpenter, two post players, led the way with four points apiece.

“It was awesome, exactly what we needed,” Hanson said of the two juniors' performances. “We’ve got our length working for us on the inside, and they’re going to get better as we go. We’ve just kind of got to mesh it all together, the inside and outside, and get the offensive attack going.”

Emily Clark scored three points for the Chiefs. Dakota Friday and Cassidy Jewell each added two.

“We need more time on offense,” Hanson said. “We’ve got to get more reps on offense, we’ve got to learn how each other plays. Another thing, fundamentals. With everything so packed and crunched, we haven’t gotten a chance to focus on a lot because everything is new, from out of bounds plays to our offense. We’ve just got to break it down, get back to the basics and start building our new system.”

Also for Gaylord, Hali Lenartowicz finished with six points, Karlee Pretzlaff and Addison McDonald both netted five, and Meghan Keen and Alexis Shepherd chipped in with four apiece.

Cheboygan hosts East Jordan in a non-conference matchup on Monday, while unbeaten Gaylord will take on Muskegon Mona Shores at home on Saturday.

In the junior varsity game, Cheboygan suffered a 52-33 loss to Gaylord.

Presley Chamberlain’s 10 points led the Chiefs, while Olivia Patrick scored eight and Jaelyn Wheelock netted seven. Joyce Ormsbee scored three, Kyleigh Burt and Amber Gahn each had two, and Charlotte Lajoye tallied one.

This article originally appeared on Cheboygan Daily Tribune: Cheboygan girls surrender huge run, fall to Gaylord in home opener