Hull, Iowa — The Western Christian Wolfpack took a pair of Lakes Conference varsity basketball games from the Spirit Lake Indians Tuesday night at the Western gym.
In the girls contest the Wolfpack led at all the breaks 10-9 at the end of one, then running up a lead in the 2nd quarter to take a 30-15 lead into the locker room at the half. Spirit Lake and Western each scored just 10 points in the 3rd quarter, with the Wolfpack leading 40-25 at the quarter break before going on to win 47-32.
Western’s Olivia Granstra led all scorers with 18 points, while Emma Bousema added 17, including a couple of big three point shots. Abby Postma and Cassie Van Otterloo each contributed 6 points in the Western Christian win.
Spirit Lake’s leading scorer, and the only Indian in double-figures, was Jordyn Hamm who came away with 14 points. Karli Olsen contributed 9 points, with Emma Loveall adding 4, Brooke Smith contributing 3, and Sophia Butler and Mikia Kreiner each adding a point in the losing effort.
With the win, Western brings their season record to .500, at 7-7. The loss drops Spirit Lake to 7-8 on the season.
In the nightcap, the Western Christian boys jumped out early and never looked back, leading Spirit Lake 14-6 at the end of one, 36-17 at intermission,, 55-26 at the end of three quarters, sailing on to a 57-32 Lakes Conference win over Spirit Lake.
Western had two scorers in double figures, Clay Van Tol with 14, and Carter Broek with 10. Other Western points came from Harry Steele and Dawson Feenstra who each contributed 7 points in the win. Dyson Kooima scored 4, with 3 each from Tate Winterfeld, Zach Van Essen, and Jacob Ver Burg, and 2 each from Justin Bleeker,Trevor Anderson and Cole Zevenbergen.
No Spirit Lake Indian player reached double figures in the contest. They were led in scoring by Greg Will who accounted for 9 points, Brent Scott and Luke Sidles each contributed 6 points, with 3 points from Creighton Morisch, and 2 each from Ben Newman, Tyler Kreiner, Mason McCaffrey andCael Amos.
Coach Keizer had this to say about the game, “This was a nice bounce-back win for us. After a disappointing loss last week, I liked how our guys responded on Monday in practice and ultimately that set us up to play well tonight.
Spirit Lake was missing a few of their key players so we really picked up our full-court pressure and caused them to turn the ball over.
We didn’t shoot it very well but I was happy with the shots we were taking. We had great looks at the basket all night.
It was nice to get some of the guys on the end of the bench in for most of the second half. They have been working extremely hard in practice and it’s nice to get them some playing experience on the floor in a game setting.”
With the win the Wolfpack extends their season record to 9-3, while the Indians, who played without their big play maker, Owen Coburn, who is recovering from a broken wrist, fell to 7-6 on the year.
The next outing for the Western Christian Wolfpack girls and boys teams will be a non-conference match-up Friday night at Tea, South Dakota. You can hear that double header on KIWA-FM 105.3. The next outing for Spirit Lake will be a girl-boy doubleheader against Estherville-Lincoln Central in a Lakes Conference match-up at Spirit Lake Friday night.
