Women’s basketball team falls short in regional title game, 77-64
By: SPENCER GLEASON
Editor in Chief
With eight minutes left in the second half of the Lady Archers’ Region XVI Championship game, sophomore guard Kalah Martin could see the writing on the wall.
Their season was nearing the end.
With less than two minutes to play, Head Coach Shelly Ethridge and Assistant Coach Melaine Marcy took their team captain out of the game.
Reality set in. Emotion poured out.
“I realized what was going on — that it was the end,” Martin said. “I was really frustrated. I was angry. We weren’t playing well. We didn’t make shots. We didn’t get stops. But I was angry because as a freshman, we went to nationals. And you want to repeat that as a sophomore. I was upset.”
When the buzzer rang, the Lady Archers were on the short end of a 77-64 final against the North Central Missouri College Lady Pirates.
“Everyone’s disappointed and pretty upset,” Ethridge said after the game. “The goal early in the season that they set, we didn’t reach. So, everybody’s disappointed. But I told them, ‘This is a great year.’ We were 17-7 going into tonight. And you get to the fight where if you don’t make it to the national tournament, everybody thinks it was a bad year and this was a great year for us.”
The 2013-14 Lady Archers were two wins away from appearing in their third straight NJCAA National Tournament. The season spanned across eight months, but fell just shy of the ultimate goal that Martin and her teammates set — a national tournament playoff berth and a top-ten finish. With a 17-8 overall record, the Lady Archers finished with a silver medal in the Region XVI Tournament.
“We had a good season. We came up short tonight, but I thought North Central played an excellent game and deserved to win the game,” Ethridge said. “We missed a lot of free throws, a lot of easy baskets. We didn’t shoot well from the field. They outplayed us.”
Although the loss was the way the season ended, Ethridge gave her team credit.
“The girls have worked hard all year,” Ethridge said. “They deserve all of the accolades that they’ve received this year.”
Martin was the only returning player from last year’s Region XVI Championship team. This season, the 12-girl roster saw fresh faces. Over the course of the year, Ethridge and Marcy created team chemistry in practice.
“From day one, they say this is your family for the next x-amount of months, however long the season is. They’ll try to break us down in practice by having a hard practice,” Martin said. “If we run a lot in practice and everybody is exhausted, that allows us to come together. People lean on their teammates [when they] go through tough times in practice. That’s how they create a family.”
That family atmosphere is one that the Lady Archers’ coaching duo tries to implement.
“If everybody is dying during practice, at least you know that you’re not alone dying that day in practice. At least you have 11 other girls that are feeling the same pain you are,” Martin said. “So, it’s kind of a relief to know that they’re going through the same thing that you are. That helps.”
The season saw the Lady Archers go on winning streaks of seven games and three games. And only once did the Lady Archers lose back-to-back games.
Looking back on the season, Martin realizes how far they came and recognizes how far that was.
“In the beginning of the season it was whole new team. No one really knew each other. We had to really work on team chemistry and we to do that throughout the whole entire season,” Martin said. “I think we came a long way, not playing with each other at all. I think we had an okay season. Of course you want to always go to nationals, but for not playing with anybody previously, I think we did an okay job.”
