Rebels up and down in league

Hyde performance by the W.R. Myers Rebels varsity girls basketball on its two Southern Alberta High School Girls Basketball League games as the team headed into the Christmas break.

The Jekyll came in the form of a solid 78-43 dismantling of the Magrath Pandas on the road on Dec. 17.

The Rebels raced out to an 11-point lead in the first quarter and never looked back, increasing its lead to as high as 35 points after the third quarter.

Hayley Lepard’s 12 points came on a perfect six-for-six shooting day to go with seven steals.  Katessa Gross poured in 17 points and Sam Terry added 14. Nina Gansner hit for 12 points and blocked six shots. Gansner and Paige Wood each hauled in seven rebounds.

“We started off the game very quickly and got that 10-point lead to end the first quarter. The game seemed closer than 10 points though — we continued to score and defend and ended the first half up by 15,” said Kenney Wood, head coach of the W.R. Myers Rebels varsity girls basketball team.

“We told the team at half-time that we better be prepared to battle in the first five minutes of the third quarter because this game could still go either way. We told them that the Pandas will want to knock the point spread to under 10 and we cannot let that happen. The girls rose up in the quarter and only allowed the Pandas to score seven points while we scored 27. Those 10 minutes really took the wind out of the Pandas sails and put the game out of reach.”

Wood applauded the team effort that saw the Rebels shoot a solid 57 per cent from the field.

“Defensively we were able to clamp down and stop them,” said Wood.

The team was unable to carry that momentum over to its road game against Chinook Coyotes on Dec. 18 in a 68-43 loss in its Hyde performance.

Terry had 16 points and Caroline Steinborn chipped in 10.

Lepard did not play in the game after suffering a sprained ankle in the last 30 seconds of the Rebels game against the Pandas and Gansner saw limited minutes, suffering an injured ankle early on in the contest.

“As good as we played against Magrath, that’s how bad we played against Chinook as we were down to seven players. Because of the lack of bodies we couldn’t do some things that we wanted to do and we ran out of gas,” said Wood. “Chinook is ranked first in 4A right now, they are a good team and when you don’t play well against a good team you will lose.”