At Everett on Saturday night for a makeup game from before Christmas, the Oak Harbor girls basketball teams lost two of the 3 games, one of them an unexpected loss.

The freshman team was totally dominated by Everett, especially in the 1st period, when the Seagulls jumped to an 11-0 lead. The Wildcats started scoring in the 2nd, but could only keep even with Everett, who pulled away in the 4th to win 34-20. The girls were 3-for-15 from the free throw line, but did get scoring from 7 different players, led by Kaitlynn Rossman with 7. Coach Showalter has been impressed by her play, saying she has shown a lot of progress since summer basketball. Rayan Russell scored 4, Liz Hedderman 3, Kristen Winston and Erika Flores 2, and Lia Pantoleon and DJ 1 each. From talking to several Everett fans, the Everett Freshman team is quite good, and better than the JV team.

It was the opposite on the main floor for the JV game. Oak Harbor blew out the Seagulls, holding them to single digit scoring in each period. Behind 6 points by Molly DeLeon, the Wildcats led 11-1 at the end of the 1st and 22-9 at the half. The girls let up a little in the 4th; allowing Everett to score 6 points in the last few minutes and build their score to 20. The final was Oak Harbor 51, Everett 20. Molly hit for a game-high 15 points and Yoshi had 11. Shantae Young scored 8, Tatiana Cumming 6, Adrianna Royal 5, Jessica James 4 and Mariah Ferguson 2. The girls were a very respectable 7-for-12 from the line, but Mariah Ferguson fouled out near the end of the game.

In varsity action, the Wildcats were up against an 0-6 Everett team, a team that lost to Monroe by 30 points. The game started out looking like it would be an Oak Harbor rout, as the girls led 17-8 behind 6 Jen Jansen points at the end of the 1st, but in the 2nd, defense faltered a bit and Everett scored 17 points, more than half of them off 3-point shots, and Everett cut the OH lead to 30-25 at the half. The Seagulls came out on fire, showing hustle and crisp passing in the 2nd half while the Wildcat offense stuttered, scoring only 10 points in each of the last two periods, and with Everett leading by 1 starting the 4th period. With time running down, Oak Harbor took a 1-point lead, but Everett hit a 3-pointer, then sank a couple of free throws when the Wildcats started fouling to stop the clock, and the Wildcats lost a heartbreaker 54-50. Jessica Denmon led the ‘Cats with 17 and Jansen added 11. Nikki Mowbray scored 8, Cori Henricksen 5, Cheyenne Tubo 4, and Clarissa Abadesco and Kathryn Fisken 2 each. The Wildcats hit two 3-pointers, both by Jansen, while Everett hit 7 for the game.

The Wildcat girls have two home games this week, on Monday the 19th against Lake Stevens and Friday the 23rd vs. Snohomish. They have an away game at Cascade on the 21st.

Just 11 photos of the games, and they are posted HERE.

A few video highlight clips are HERE.