There are a lot of new faces on the court for Western Albemarle’s girls basketball team.
“It’s week one so there are some really good moments and some moments that need a lot of work,” said Western coach Kris Wright. “We’ve been talking about that all week. We talked about it today at halftime, we talked about it before the game and it’s getting better.”
Thursday night was one of those bright moments as the Warriors beat Covenant 43-30 to pick up an early season victory in the Western Albemarle tip-off tourney. The victory sets Western up for a 7 p.m. matchup with Blacksburg in the four-team tournament’s championship game Saturday.
The Warriors built a 12-8 lead in the first quarter behind a big effort from Rachel Cooke, who had 11 of her 13 points in the opening frame. Cooke suffered an apparent minor injury that sidelined her for most of the rest of the game in the third quarter but Western’s defense and some timely buckets from Deja Newton-Grant—part of her 12 point night helped the Warriors stay head. Newton-Grant, just a freshman, showed the potential to give Western some scoring punch the Warriors will need with Anna Sumpter out of the season after an injury suffered in travel soccer.
“Deja is extremely athletic and extremely high energy — she plays really hard,” Wright said. “We’ll teach her some moves and some comfort level type things to make it easier for use the potential that she very obviously has.”
Covenant’s roster, now under the guidance of first-year head coach Rock Watson, is loaded with young players including a trio of eighth graders. One of those inexperienced players is freshman Emily Maupin, who led the way with 13 points and has clearly expanded her game of late.
“She’s played a lot of AAU ball over the summer so she was able to get better in the post and on the perimeter as well,” Watson said. “We want her to get as many touches as she can, if she’s not getting the touches then our offense really struggles. .”
The Eagles will play Altavista in the tournament’s consolation game Saturday at 3:30 p.m.
Fluvanna falls to William Fleming
The Flucos dropped to 0-2 on the season with a 57-36 loss to William Fleming out of Roanoke.
Kiana Childress led the Flucos with 20 points while Katie Stutz finished with 10 points and 12 rebounds.
