Lady Cats see successful weekend of basketball

The Lady Bobcat basketball team had a very successful weekend in Burlington with both the JV and varsity teams coming away with wins.

Coach Matt McPhie said the varsity girls played very tough defense, forcing 29 turnovers and playing at a high level defensively.

The Lady Cats held Burlington to single digits in each of the four quarters with a final score of 45-24.

Leading the team in rebounds was Kaylee DeVries, pulling down five, including two offensive rebounds. She also led the team with five steals.

Tahja Hunt did a nice job distributing the basketball, handing out four assists.

Ashley McPhie led the team in scoring with 17 points, followed by McKenna Bomengen and Aspen Jensen, each with 10 points.

“The girls are playing tough,” McPhie said, “playing great team basketball. It’s very early in the season and we have a lot of things we need to improve on, but the progress to this point is commendable and the girls are working extremely hard and are committed to the process of building a team.”

The JV Lady Cats team came out on top of Burlington, too. They pulled away and comfortably beat Burlington’s JV team by 25 points.

They were led by great play from Elisa Weber, Aspen Jensen, Audrey Axtell and Emme Norsworthy.

Coach McPhie said all of the girls played great defense over the weekend.

The freshman team, coached by Dana Bjorhus, traveled to Lovell over the weekend for the Lovell Invitational.

They lost the first game on Friday against Powell, 33-40.

Julie Johnson and Kamry Bowman led the offensive effort for the game, scoring 12 and eight points, respectively.

They won Saturday morning against Burlington, 36-27 with Bowman leading the way, scoring 10 points. Bronwyn Dobbins was right behind her, adding nine points, all from behind the arc.

They added a second win on Saturday in their final win against Lovell with a final score of 36-18.

Julie Johnson led the way with 12 points, followed by Layne Myers with eight.

“Overall, this was a great weekend for the freshmen,” coach Bjorhus said. “It was nice to finally compete against another team and get a few games under our belt.

“I saw a lot of really good things on offense. We started moving the ball well and finding good looks. Defensively, we found some things we need to work on, but we definitely improved with each game we played.”

Varsity will have their next contests in Pinedale on Jan. 4-5 where they will take on Pinedale, Big Piney and Lyman. JV will also be in Pinedale, playing against the same line-up.

The freshman girls played Lander at home on Tuesday and then will travel to Fort Washakie to play their JV team on Friday at 4 p.m.