Gresham girls basketball team gets win in return to court

Wildcats grind out victory over Wausaukee
By: 
Morgan Rode
Sports Editor

The Gresham Community School girls basketball team topped Wausaukee 61-36 in a nonconference matchup on Jan. 13 in Gresham.

The win was the third in a row for Gresham, but was the team’s first game since Dec. 30 after the team had to pause because of COVID-19 concerns.

Unsurprisingly, the Wildcats looked like a team that hadn’t played in a couple weeks, but a surge at the end of the first half carried over into the second half, helping the hosts cruise to victory.

“It’s really nice, I missed it. It’s just been really hard not playing,” said Gresham senior Hannah Cerveny, who led the team with 16 points. “We were missing some of our players still, but it’s still good to get out on the court — we still miss them obviously but we wish they could be back with us next week, and they will.”

“We struggled because we had a couple weeks off, but coming back out it was really nice,” said senior Valarie Cerveny, who added 15 points. “You could obviously tell we had a couple weeks off. We had a lot of dumb turnovers and we didn’t play very well, but a win is a win.”

Gresham jumped out to a 9-0 lead in the first three-plus minutes of action, with Hannah Cerveny, Valarie Cerveny, sophomore Maddie Haffner and freshman Janay Pecore-Kirkland all scoring, but Wausaukee responded with 11 of the next 13 points to tie the contest up.

The teams battled back and forth for the next several minutes before Gresham used a 6-1 finish to the half to create a little bit of separation.

Pecore-Kirkland scored a couple of buckets on the run, while Haffner hit a pair of free throws.

Wausaukee scored the first basket of the first half before Gresham took control and started looking like the team it had before its shutdown.

The Wildcats answered the first bucket of the second half with a 14-0 run. The spurt started with free throws from Valarie Cerveny before Pecore-Kirkland added a bucket and Hannah Cerveny made two free throws. Haffner then added a bucket before Hannah Cerveny knocked in a 3-pointer. Junior Chloe Bohl got into the scoring action with a field goal before a free throw from Haffner capped the run.

“I think our defense got better as the game went on,” said Haffner, who ended up scoring nine points. “We kind of got back into our shooting too, we weren’t forcing it as much as we tried to in the first half.”

Wausaukee was able to trim Gresham’s lead to 14 before the Wildcats went on a 9-1 run to put the game away.

Hannah Cerveny tallied 11 of her 16 points in the second half to help Gresham take control. Valarie Cerveny had eight points in the half, and Bohl had six to finish with eight for the contest.

Pecore-Kirkland took advantage of her extra minutes on the court, tallying 11 points in the contest.

As the Wildcats get back into the swing of thing and try and catch up on their postponed contests, the team hopes to improve in several facets of the game.

Hannah Cerveny noted that doing more conditioning to get back in playing shape is key over the next couple of weeks. She and Haffner both said that rebounding and boxing out is an area the team wants to improve in, and that’s something Valarie Cerveny believes helped the team pull away from Wausaukee.

Wausaukee 20 16 — 36

Gresham 27 34 — 61

Gresham (61): Hannah Cerveny 4-8 16, Maddie Haffner 3-4 9, Josie Cerveny 2-4 2, Chloe Bohl 0-0 8, Valarie Cerveny 4-6 15, Janay Pecore-Kirkland 1-2 11.

Wausaukee (36): Rachel Schlies 1-3 23, Ella White 1-4 1, Jessica Luccarini 0-0 2, Autumn Schroeder 0-2 2, Sparrow Luccarini 4-7 8.

sports@newmedia-wi.com