Women Show Improvement Through Season's End
The Faith women's basketball team finished the season with the record of four wins and 22 losses. As far as wins and losses are concerned, the Lady Eagles had a very tough year. There were games where Faith got beat pretty handily, but there were also six games that Faith only lost by single digits. These six games were learning experiences for the team to realize how to handle the pressure of the final minutes of play. This team will only be better next year as they showed much improvement as the season went on.
Proof of the improvement came with a big first round win at the conference tournament against an opponent who had beat them earlier in the year by 28 points. Another sign of improvement was seen in their final game taking a first half lead into halftime against the number one seeded opponent in the region at the Region Tournament. The Lady Eagles continued to work hard and find ways to keep motivated to improve. They also did a great job of keeping their testimony on the court and they were again recognized for that by receiving the MCCC Sportsmanship Award. This is the second year in a row for the Lady Eagles to receive that award.
As the coach moved pieces around and changed starting line ups, Freshmen Laura Garwick became the Lady Eagles most valuable player. She led the team in scoring, rebounding, steals, and every shooting percentage. As the season progressed, it became apparent that the Lady Eagle's strength was in the post, and to be competitive, they had to get the ball down low. With that in mind, Hannah Nichols led the team in assists by passing to Laura Garwick, Ashley Pearson, and Kelsey Grider. A major strength for the Lady Eagles was their ability to rebound the basketball, out rebounding their opponents by an average of eight rebounds each game. Defensively, Kelsey Grider was one of the main staples in the Lady Eagles defense as she was in the top of the leader board in the nation in blocked shots.
The Lady Eagles team had two players that were able to set new records. Junior Kelsey Grider recorded her 105th block to pass the current 83 blocks in a season. Kelsey is also the current blocks record holder sitting at 230 blocks in a career with one year left. Kelsey will look to build on that number next year, as well as her total rebounds in a career as she is 35 rebounds away from breaking the record of 648 rebounds in a career. Freshman Laura Garwick had quite a first year as she scored 415 points, just 54 points shy of total points in a season. Because of her trips to the free-throw line, Laura is now the record holder for free-throw attempts and free-throw makes in a season as she went 110 for 171. Laura also had some big game moments. She is now has the rebounding record with 29 rebounds against Emmaus on January 31st, the steals record with 15 steals against Emmaus on December 10th, and the free-throw attempts/free-throw makes shooting 13 for 18 from the line against Grace on November 26th.
The Faith women's basketball team would like to thank you all for the support that you have shown. We hope to keep improving, and representing Christ with positive attitudes and testimonies.
