Chelsea Girls

Face Three D-III Teams

By Mary Childs

Last week the Chelsea girls came out strong in the first minutes of play to build a lead against South Royalton. Unfortunately, the D-III powerhouse overtook the Lady Devils and Chelsea would never lead again as the Royals rolled to victory. The final score was 28-56 in South Royalton’s favor.

Loss to Williamstown

Last Friday the Chelsea girls traveled to Williamstown for an exciting match-up, the Blue Devils versus the Red Devils in front of a big home crowd for the opening ceremony of the Williamstown gym.

Williamstown dominated the first quarter picking off passes from an unprepared Chelsea team. But the Red Devils didn’t let up. Within the final minute of the first half, Chelsea narrowed the gap down to three points. Unfortunately, foul trouble on Chelsea’s side enabled the Blue Devils to extend their lead to nine points going into the second half.

The third quarter was Chelsea’s best as they outscored Williamstown with lay-ups, drives through the lane and Lindsey Smith’s sharp shooting. Chelsea whittled away at Williamstown going into the fourth quarter down by just two points.

Williamstown ran out the clock with a stall and extended their lead at the foul line. The final result was a 42-33 win for Williamstown. Smith was Chelsea’s high scorer with 10 points and Jill Cray chipped in 9.

D-III Thetford

The Chelsea Devils faced their third D-III team, Thetford Academy, in a row last Tuesday and came away with a close 29-26 loss. The Chelsea Devils came out with a slow offense in the first quarter, which proved to be too slow as Thetford scored the first eight points of the game. It was nearing the end of the quarter that Chelsea scored their first basket.

The Lady Devils came out with a new strategy and soon sank key shots narrowing Thetford’s lead to three, 11-8. The game proved to be a tough defensive fight as the halftime score was 15-10, Thetford with the lead.

Chelsea continued to attack the basket and pull down key rebounds to keep them in reach of the Thetford Panthers. In the fourth quarter, Thetford began to pull away and, with two minutes left in the game, they had the lead at 27-18. The Lady Devils didn’t give up. Robyn Kennedy picked up the intensity when she made a swooping steal from Thetford point guard and made the lay-up. Kennedy’s drives to the basket and Heidi Hatch’s free throws put Chelsea back into the game, closing the gap to only three points.

Unfortunately, time worked against the Devils, and they were unable to defeat the Panthers. The final score was 27-24.

Chelsea’s Hatch was high scorer with 10 points as Kennedy contributed 8. Their record falls to 5-8. They will host Twinfield Thursday, Jan. 25.

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