In a girls basketball contest between the only two remaining unbeaten teams remaining in GAC Central play, Ft. Zumwalt South survived a defensive struggle against Washington.
The score was close throughout the contest, but the Lady Jays could never push ahead, suffering a 34-30 loss to the Lady Bulldogs.
“A lot of times when you hold teams to 34 points, you come out on the winning side, but this was different for us,” said Washington Head Coach Adam Fischer. “We’ve played tremendous defense over the last four to five games, but the offense was not there this time.”
Washington (8-7, 2-1) held a 12-9 lead after one quarter, but was outscored 11-4 in the second quarter to trail 20-16 at halftime.
Ft. Zumwalt South (10-7, 3-0) seemed to be a step ahead of the Lady Jays for most of the second half.
Kaitlin Evans led Washington in the scoring column with 11 points.
Courtney Kedroski finished the game with seven points.
Paige Carpenter pitched in with six points.
Kirstie Leslie scored four points. Helena Ballmann had two points.
Also playing were Alex Ready, Megan Bauche, Rachel Kackley, Megan Freitag and Hannah Leslie.
Alex Coleman, Claire Johnson and Abby Modaff each scored six points for Ft. Zumwalt South.
Maddy German and Danielle McLean both had five points.
“Ft. Zumwalt South did a good job of getting their hands on the ball and causing our girls to get out of the areas of the floor we are trying to operate from,” Fischer said. “We had some turnovers to start the game and most of them were just mental errors.”
Trailing 23-18, Washington trimmed its deficit to 23-21 after three quarters on a three-pointer by Evans.
The Lady Jays then tied the game 23-23 on a basket by Kedroski with 6:48 remaining in the fourth quarter.
Kedroski scored all seven of her points in the first 4:08 of the fourth quarter, which helped keep the score close.
A basket by Evans with 2:05 left in the game pulled the Lady Jays to within 31-30.
With Ft. Zumwalt South still leading 31-30, the Lady Jays had the ball with 57 seconds left on the clock, but were unable to get on the scoreboard for the remainder of the contest.
