For some teams, reaching the Stellar Catch A Rising Star Showcase tournament championship game is a long and grueling road with multiple games played in the heat. However, for teams that keep winning, it can be a breeze.

Last weekend at Cedar Beach Park, the Parkland girls basketball team needed to play just four games to reach the Sunday evening title game. The team went on to win its fifth and most important game, the final.

The Trojans went 5-0 including a 33-14 win over Whitehall in the championship contest. It is a different route than past years when Parkland has had to climb out of the losers bracket and sometimes play back-to-back games to reach the final game. That is what happened to the Zephyrs.

While Parkland played five games overall, Whitehall played five on Sunday alone, and that helped the Trojans, who had a four-hour break from the semifinal game, and used a deeper bench to beat the Zephyrs.

"It's good to see us come out and compete," said Tojan head coach Wes Spence. "But our goal every game is to get better. I want to coach the kids during the summer time and see us get better versus the winning and the losing."

Parkland started off fast, holding a 12-point lead in the first half, and never looked back. Nadine Ewald, who was named the tournament MVP, led the team with nine points.

But it was also the play of the Trojan defense that led Parkland to the win in the title game.

With wins over Southern Lehigh on Friday, Quakertown Saturday, and Pocono Mountain East and Stroudsburg on Sunday, the Trojans stayed fresh heading into the final, and Spence was able to use all of his players.

Some of the younger, less-experienced varsity players that gave Spence contributions included Devyn Anderson, Cathleen Gaffney and Rachel Medlar.

"We had some kids get to start who typically are role players because kids weren't here," said Spence. "We were able to bring up some young kids because we had limited numbers earlier in the day. For me, it was a chance to get a lot of kids some experience against varsity teams, and that was good."

Parkland will now look for the sweep of summer league tournaments when they compete at Sportsfest this weekend.