| Misty Valdez defends the basket as a Tiger defender prepares to launch a shot in the final game of the season for the East Carbon team. The Vikings finished the season with a 44-26 win over Wasatch Academy after falling to West Desert, 41-29 earlier in the week. The Vikings now look forward to competing in the Class 1A state finals. |
Girls basketball coach Ryan Hepworth stood nervously in the foyer of East Carbon High on Thursday night, watching for the officials that would be working the game between his Lady Vikings and Wasatch Academy’s girls team.
“I goofed up on the officials,” he said standing there with the game time already 15 minutes behind schedule. “They’ll be here any time and then we can get started.”
Hepworth was also probably nervous about the upcoming game that evening and the fact that every minute his game was delayed, the second game on the night, a Region 16 tournament game that Green River High had scheduled at the Sunnyside campus, would be put behind too.
Turns out he didn’t need to be nervous at all. Everything went off without a hitch, well except that the officials hadn’t been scheduled. In the end Green River and Altamont battled it out until past 9 p.m. and things went fine for the hosting East Carbon campus. But of course the real frosting on the cake was that the Lady Vikings defeated the Wasatch Academy girls 44-26 in a resounding victory.
That sets up a cross over play in game for the Lady Vikings that is scheduled for Tuesday night in the Viking gym against Milford and a chance to head to the state tournament one day later at Timpview High School in Utah County.
The Wasatch Academy game was a good finish to a week in which things didn’t go to well during a Wednesday night game against West Desert. In an unusual night when the boys and girls games were both held at the ECH campus, West Desert defeated the Lady Vikings 41-29.
In that case the game was lost in the second half, when West Desert got it’s offense rolling and the ECH girls couldn’t stop it.
In the first two quarters, the ECH girls held their own, in fact left for half time with a two point lead, 12-10.
But the third quarter became their undoing as the Lady Hawks were able to finally reach double figures in a quarter and outscored the ECH kids 13-8.
And then in the fourth quarter they raised that even more by scoring 16 and allowing the Lady Vikings only nine points.
No one on the ECH team reached double figures in scoring during the game. Chelsey Timothy and Joyce Clark each scored eight points to lead the Lady Vikes.
So when the end of the week came, the ECH girls team were saying TGIF, and they had good reason to after their victory. From the get-go they jumped all over the girls from the school in Mount Pleasant. In fact by the end of the quarter they had such a commanding lead, 14-2, that there was little doubt they would win the game.
However, the Lady Tigers didn’t give up. They came back in the second quarter with great improvement as they produced 13 points to the Lady Vikings 14. Still ECH’s lead still increase by one and the half time score stood at 28-15.
At half time the Sunnyside school honored their senior players, because this was the last regular season game at home. Then things got rolling again. In some ways the game almost felt like a state tournament contest with Altamont and Green River’s teams marching in at various times and taking their places to watch the rest of the first contest.
The third period was very close to more of the same as the Lady Vikings doubled the Lady Tigers output 12-6.
In the fourth period Hepworth decided to put in the second string. They did a good job, despite the fact that Wasatch Academy continued to attack with mostly their first string. The Lady Tigers were able to win the quarter 5-4.
It was another great game for Timothy who had 19 points in the winning effort.
Misty Valdez contributed eight points while Amanda Hepworth put in six.