Greendale Girls Basketball Season Wraps Up

This is the final week of regular season hoops for the Greendale High School girls basketball team for 2018, as they played at Brown Deer on Tuesday, and at home against New Berlin Eisenhower on Thursday.

The Panthers beat Brown Deer in their first matchup 45-44, but they had a tough matchup against the top team in the conference in New Berlin Eisenhower later this week, losing the first game 66-25.

With this being the final guaranteed week of games for the Panthers before they head into post season play, sophomore Kayce Vaile is looking back on what the team did well and didn’t do well this season.

“Our team struggled to play a full game,” Vaile said. “We either dug ourselves a hole to start the game or took off plays causing us to lose a lead. The team executed plays well and ran them until they were perfect.”

The girls played a fantastic game on Tuesday against Brown Deer, beating the Falcons in blowout fashion with the final score being 49-29. Vaile lead all scorers with 24 points, and freshman Sarah Derksen scored 10 points, and senior Cassidy Sanchez finished with 9 points.

Vaile was impressed with how the Panthers played as a team in the Brown Deer game.

“In the Brown Deer game we played well as a team,” Vaile said. “We worked together to keep them out of the game. When one person hustled to get a loose ball, it made everyone else work hard. Playing as a team allowed us to see what we can achieve against our opponents.”

Senior Gina Sommerfeld thinks the drills they did during practice help them win.

“Our team works on a lot of breakdown drills during practice,” Sommerfeld said. “We also work on transition drills and scrimmaging.”

The girls on Thursday fell to Eisenhower 58-32.  Sanchez lead the team with 17 points.

Since the playoffs are next week for the Panthers, the seniors’ careers at Greendale are almost over unless the team can make a deep playoff run. The team will have to use the momentum from Tuesdays win and keep it for senior night and the playoffs.

Sommerfeld and Vaile look back on their favorite moments of the season.

“My favorite memory was our most recent game when I scored 24 points,” Vaile said. “That’s my highest, and the atmosphere of the gym and our team was amazing.”

“My most memorable moment of the season was when we played Franklin in the Christine Rathke tournament over winter break,” Sommerfeld said. “We played very well as a team and everything that we had been learning throughout the season just seemed to click. Our win against Franklin gave us a sneak peak of all the potential our team has for the future, if we keep working hard.”

Senior Taylore DeLong says leadership is important for her and the seniors so the underclassmen can hit their peak in performance on the court.

“We have seven seniors this year, having this many seniors a lot of us have to become leaders by teaching underclassmen,” DeLong said. “When we leave there are 7 spots to fill on varsity, so we are trying to teach them all that we know so that they can carry it into the next season.”