By Mike McMurran
Sports Editor
In a key Gateway Athletic Conference North Division contest last Friday evening, Saint Charles High upset cross town rival St. Charles West 47-42. The win puts head coach Corey Nesslage’s Lady Pirates in the driver’s seat for the race to the conference title with a 3-0 record.
The Pirates were lead by sophomore Abby Schultehenrich’s 24 points. Schultehenrich hit 7 field goals, one of which was a three pointer, and nailed nine from the charity stripe to accumulate her game high total.
St. Charles came out of the locker room ready to play. They started the contest with an 8-0 run. Late in the first quarter the Lady Warriors managed to scrap back into the contest and secured a one point lead. “The girls are starting to appreciate how hard you have to compete at the varsity level to be successful, and I’ve never been so proud of a group,” boasted Nesslage. He continued, “You look at that floor, we’ve got two freshmen, a sophomore and two juniors on it playing against a team that’s got all five starters back from a very good team last year, and I thought, not to take anything away from West, but I thought we outplayed them for 32 minutes. That’s a credit to our girls. We prepared for them, we had a game plan ready going in and they executed.”
Friday’s win was the third out of four contests for the Lady Pirates, and could just have easily been four in row. “We went up there to Sullivan (on Tuesday) without Schultehenrich, it was a long bus ride, and it may have been good for us in some ways because other girls had to step up because we didn’t have Abby with us, and they found out that they could score at this level too,” offered Nesslage, “And a couple of those girls that I’m talking about in particular are people like Bekebrede and Witte. I mean, Bekebrede absolutely played out of her mind on Tuesday night, and I think that carried over to tonight.” Freshman Erin Bekebrede followed her performance against Sullivan by adding 12 against West.
Without a doubt the star was Schultehenrich. “Abby’s got the ability to do that night in and night out, and I think you saw a little bit of what Abby Schultehenrich’s all about,” said Nesslage. “When she mentally wants to come out and ready to play, she can flat-out dominate a basketball game, and I think it showed tonight.” “It was amazing, it was awesome,” said the soft spoken Schultehenrich. She continued, “We just played as a team and we were just all doing good and everything was working.”
The loss dropped West to 12-5 overall, and 2-1 in conference play, while the Pirates improved to 7-8 and sit on top of the Gateway North at 3-0.
Boys report
Coffey scores 19, leads West to conference win over St. Charles
On the surface little has changed since cross-town rivals St. Charles West and St. Charles High met on Thanksgiving eve. Last Friday the two squads met for the second time with West once again coming out on top with a 13 point cushion. The road traveled to earn the win was a different route this time. “It takes a lot to stop their two big guys on the inside,” offered West head coach Terry Hollander, “they are big, they are strong and they both know how to score.” The “they” Hollander was making reference to are senior Mark Budde and sophomore Josh Harrellson.
West looked as though they were going to make a rout of it racing to a 12-2 lead at the end of the first quarter. Coach Gary Wacker’s squad would not roll over though; led by Budde’s game high 11points the Pirates fought back to a 6 point half time deficit (22-18). “We had them down 18-4 and then you look up half way though the third quarter and its tied,” said Hollander. “With about five minutes left in the game we did a really good job of handling the ball, a great job of shooting free throws,” he continued.
What the Warriors did was shoot 86% from the free throw line in the 4th quarter, 12 out of 14. They were led by freshman guard Brian Maurer who nailed six out of six. Maurer seems to be making a habit out of nailing free throws in the 4th quarter. In the semifinals of the Fontbonne Tournament against McCluer he stepped up and hit 5 out of 6 in the 4th quarter. “I kinda enjoy going to the line in those type of situations,” says the freshman, “that’s what I do to help out my team.”
The win improved West’s conference record to 2-0 and 14-4 over-all. St. Charles dropped to 2-1 and 10-8.
