After learning much from their previous game, girls’ varsity basketball defeats Delta

Jacqueline Chao
With junior Esme Bruce-Romo and sophomore Heidi Johnson following close behind, junior Yasmin Gupta shoots while a Delta player extends her arms to block.

On a triple-header Dec. 7 night, girls’ varsity basketball defeated Delta High School, 48-30, directly after the JV girls’ own win.

Sophomore Heidi Johnson said that the girls were drained from the late-night game on Dec. 6.

“I didn’t think we had enough energy to get through tonight, but we pushed through with six players,” junior Yasmin Gupta said.

Gupta was the leading scorer with 20.

Although the team had the same players as the Dec. 6 game, junior Annya Dahmani said that they were much improved.

“We learned a lot from the other game, especially passing and cutting,” she said.

“We could handle the ball better, rebound better and look for open passes better. We had some good passes, (a) strong defense and a lot of steals.

“The whole team contributed to the final score on both defense and offense.”

Coach Latonia Pitts was also proud of the team as a unit.

“Our rebounding was superb!” she said.

“(Junior) Esme (Bruce-Romo) stepped up on the board and defense, (and junior) Katia (Dahmani) turned up the volume on her intensity. Heidi took a hard fall but continued to play and toughed it out.”

According to Katia, Delta was unimpressive.

Jacqueline Chao
Sophomore Heidi Johnson completes a layup.

“We have better ball handlers compared to them,” Annya said. “They also kept doing the same plays, so we knew what they were doing when they called (them).”

After the defense put pressure on Delta’s ball handler, Delta scored only five points in the fourth quarter, cementing the Cavs’ lead.

But the girls said they weren’t surprised by the victory.

“We beat (Delta) last year by about three points, and their best player graduated,” Katia said.

“Even though we lost one of our top scorers (Julia Owaidat, ‘16) from last year, if we played our hardest we still had a good chance of winning.”

Despite the large win, Katia said that the team still needs to work on not throwing away balls.

“In the game we would throw balls away in transition during the fast break, (throwing the ball too far ahead of the person running for a layup),” she said.

The girls’ next game is at home at 7 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 12, against Highlands High School.

By Mohini Rye

Print Friendly, PDF & Email