Delmarva Christian girls fall to Bucs
The Delmarva Christian girls’ basketball team ended its DIAA championship run with a 59-28 loss to Caravel March 6 in Georgetown. They finished the season at 21-2.
The Royals were scoring an average of 68 points per game this year, and lost one game by just four points, but they couldn't find their range against the 20th-seeded Bucs.
The Bucs jumped out to a 19-5 first-quarter lead and finished the first half up 42-15 mostly due to the 15 points scored by sophomore India Johnston. She continued to fire at will in the second half, adding 12 more to finish with 27.
Junior point guard and All-ESIAC player Grace Fetterman led the Royals with eight points. Sierra Troyer hit for five, Ainsley Bell and Kandice Schlabach scored four, Sara Walton hit a three, and Savannah Stewart and Jabre’a Purnell each hit a basket.
“We’ve definitely come a long way,” Fetterman said. “We have a lot of new freshmen and we lost some good seniors last year. It was a big change. Over this period of time, we have formed into a team. Each of us has gotten better individually.”
“We ran into a great team,” said Royals coach Jedidiah Roach. “Caravel is so much better than a 20 seed. They played hard and took a lot of our game away from us. But we played hard too. I’m proud that we continued to fight. We just couldn’t get our shots that we usually get, and we had to try to generate other ways to score. Tonight wasn’t our night. I think the magnitude of the game made us go away from our game.”
“It’s sad that our season ended tonight,” said ESIAC Player of the Year Sierra Troyer. “But we have to keep our heads up and hopefully we can redeem ourselves next season. Caravel is an overall great team. Everyone on that team worked hard tonight. We are really proud of how far we made it.”
“It was great to get as far as we did,” said senior Savannah Stewart. “Making it to the second round was really cool. We come from such a small school, and we really had to work for it and put a lot of heart into it.”
“I’m really proud of the team,” said senior Mara Agapito. “We’ve worked hard together. Not a lot of us knew each other that well at the beginning of the season, but we’ve grown together as a family. It’s just hard to say goodbye.”
The Royals’ accolades received this season include: All-ESIAC for Kandice Schlabach, Grace Fetterman, Sara Walton, Ainsley Bell and Sierra Troyer. Troyer also was named the ESIAC Player of the Year. The Royals won the ESIAC regular-season title along with the ESIAC tournament title.
