PARKERSBURG - Parkersburg Catholic's starters scored all the Crusaderettes' points Thursday night in a 53-31 victory over LKC rival Wirt County in the championship game of the 17th annual Mary O Crusaderette Classic.
Leah Hughes netted 17 points, Maddie Roedersheimer 12, Alex Schaffer 10, Reily Sturm nine and Rachel Nill five as Catholic, the No. 4 team in Class A, improved to 5-2 on the season. Wirt, now 3-6, was paced by Liz Adams with 10 points, while Stone Cheuvront added five, and Miriam Smith, Amanda Clark and Mady Hardbarger collected four each.
PC won the game in the first and third quarters, outscoring Wirt 19-7 in the opening period and then 14-6 in the third quarter to take a commanding 47-23 lead into the final quarter.
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Photo by Jeff Baughan
Wirt County's Amanda Clark, left, and Parkersburg Catholic's Reily Sturm battle for the ball Thursday during the finals of the Mary O Crusaderette Classic. The Crusaderettes won, 53-31.
With the score knotted at 5 midway through the first quarter, Catholic tallied 14 of the last 16 points in the initial eight minutes of play to surge ahead by 12 at the quarter break. In that 14-2 burst, Schaffer scored six, Sturm four, Hughes two and Roedersheimer two.
Then to start the second stanza, PC notched 10 on the first 14 points as Roedersheimer scored twice and assisted on two other hoops to key the early assault that gave the Crusaderettes a 29-11 lead by the 2:49 mark. Catholic held a 33-17 advantage at halftime.
Hughes dominated the third quarter with nine points as PC zoomed out to a 24-point margin, 45-21, at 2:38, and Catholic went on to lead by 26 on two occasions in the fourth en route to the win.
It marked the 13th time in 17 Crusaderette Classics that the host team took home the championship trophy.
Selected to the all-tournament team by the participating coaches were three Catholic players - tourney MVP Roedersheimer along with Hughes and Nill - and two each from Wirt (Cheuvront, Smith) and Buffalo (Chelsey Parkins, Olivia Dunn).
On hand for both nights of the tournament named for her was Mary Ostrowski, who handed out the team and individual awards after the championship contest.
PC head coach Marty Vierheller, while willing to take the win, was not totally happy with his team's performance. ''The bad news is we have so many areas that need to get better,'' he noted. ''The good news is that with repetition - and they're going to get repetition - we're going to get better.
''But it's not until we start doing little things exceptionally well that we're going to be an exceptional team.''
