Shekinah girls blister nets, advance in district tournament

By Chris Miles

Sports Editor

When the Shekinah Christian girls basketball team is hitting its perimeter shots, look out.

Northside Christian found out the hard way just how good the third-seeded Flames can be when their outside shots are falling.

The Flames (18-6) shot holes in the various different zone defenses the Lions threw at them and cruised to an easy 70-27 Division IV Central District tournament victory Tuesday at Jonathan Alder.

“In rhythm, in the flow of the game, when we do that, get our feet set, get our shoulders set we can shoot the ball pretty well,” Shekinah coach Rod Yoder said.

It wasn’t as if the Flames were coming down and exclusively looking for three-point baskets. The team worked the ball through the offense and the sharp passing resulted in open looks.

“For us, because we’re 5-9 and below, we’ve got to shoot the ball well especially against better teams,” Yoder said. “We work hard on shooting, we work a lot on getting squared up and shooting the ball.

“That’s a big part of our game, we have to shoot a good percentage, we did tonight.”

Point guard Bridget Troyer led the way with 20 points. She routinely found the open spots on the Lions defense and got clean looks at the basket.

Annelise Rohrer finished with 15 and Krista Shrock added 11.

Rohrer and Shrock are more like forwards, but according to their coach they too have the green light to fire away from deep.

“We have what we call guards and forwards, we don’t have a true center, but those forwards shoot just as many threes as our guards do,” he said.

“It’s not like those girls are predetermined to be inside. They get to shoot threes just like the guards do, we feel pretty confident that whoever steps out there can knock them down.”

Reserve forward Kaley Yutzy came off the bench to knock down a couple of long-range shots to finish with six points. Ashley Gingerich and Kiara Rohrer had eight points apiece.

The Flames overcame a sluggish start of the game to take a 33-13 halftime lead. They came out of the locker room fired up and ready to play in the third and quickly put the game out of reach.

“Coming out and knowing you’re going up against an overmatched opponent is hard to do,” Yoder said. “You can talk about it and you can try to tell them, but we came out lethargic in the first quarter tonight.

“At the beginning of the third quarter we came out switched up our press a little bit and caused some extra turnovers.”

With the win the Flames advance to face No. 6 Granville Christian Thursday (7 p.m.), also at Jonathan Alder.

“The level of competition is going to go way up from here,” Yoder said. “It will be a lot tougher test from here on out.”