Lady Hawks learn from Divisionals
<p>Shey Hannum dribbles the ball down the court in an earlier game. Hannum put up 15 points in the game against Ronan. </p>
THOMPSON FALLS – If it were up to Head Coach Courtney Burky, the basketball season would never end. If she had it her way, she would be in the gym tonight practicing to her hearts content.
Unfortunately for her, the Lady Hawks season did come to an end during the Divisional Tournament. Even after coming up with two losses, Coach Burky was very happy with the season Thompson Falls had.
“Overall, the girls did well. We got over a lot of personal things that we needed to get over,” Coach Burky said.
Some girls stepped up to become leaders, while others who were not scorers stepped up to the plate and started scoring.
“That was a huge step in the right direction,” Coach Burky said.
She felt the tournament as a whole was a learning experience and everyone knew that from the get go.
“We were kind of aware of that all yearlong because we were so heavy with freshmen,” Coach Burky said.
The girls put it all out on the table with their game against Loyola but they came up nine points short of the win.
In the first quarter, Loyola outscored the Lady Hawks by eight points. Although Thompson Falls was able to outscore Loyola in both the second and fourth quarter, it wasn’t enough to bounce back.
The Lady Hawks lost with a final score of 46-55.
Erica Sorlie led the team with 17 points, while Logan Beckman followed closely behind her with 15 points. The remainder of the points came from Shey Hannum, Madison Fitchett, Angela Padden, Haley Wilson and Autrey Hannum.
As the girls moved on to their second chance, Ronan was their competition.
The ladies fought hard but were unable to get their shot at redemption. The final score was close again at 45-56.
Throughout the game, Ronan stayed in the lead. Although the Lady Hawks came back in the fourth quarter and tried to overpower Ronan, outscoring them – but it was a little too late.
S. Hannum led with 15 points, while her sister A. Hannum put up 10 points.
Ultimately, the Lady Hawks lost both games due to the amount of turnovers they had.
“That’s been really indicative of our year,” Coach Burky explained. “I mean every team has their downfall and that was ours.”
The team also didn’t put up as many points as they should have. Coach Burky stressed open communication was lacking during the games, but the plan is to continue to work on that and get better for next year.
The coaching bug has bit Coach Burky again and she plans to continue coaching. As her journey continues, she said these girls would always be something important to her.
“Being this is my first year coming back, this particular group will always mean a great deal to me because I didn’t know if I would ever come back,” Coach Burky said. “I feel like everyone poured their heart and soul into this season. The girls, the coaches – I feel like we will always be connected in some way.”
Next year her hopes are that 7B will dominate the State Tournament. She hopes each team will use their experiences from this year as motivation to push themselves further in the future.