Late in the season, it gets tough to know when your team – especially one that is struggling – needs a break and when it needs to keep working. Coach Carl Scheitrum and his staff decided that the team needed a bit of a break and canceled practice this past Saturday. It wasn’t only to give the players a break, but they had been working hard, so it served as a reward. Whether it was the day off or something else, the team played arguably its worst game of the season, falling to Parkland 69-30.

“Everything was wrong tonight,” said Scheitrum. “We didn’t do anything well. I don’t know what it was. We gave them off practice on Saturday and I thought it was a good thing, but clearly, it came back to haunt us because we weren’t ready to play tonight, not in one place, one spot.”

The two teams traded baskets early on until Parkland (17-4 overall, 14-1 Eastern Pennsylvania Conference) started hitting from three-point range. Sarah Stagaard and Kristen Krause hit back-to-back threes to put Parkland up 10-4. The Trojans never looked back from that point.

In all, Parkland nailed five three-pointers in the game. By halftime, the Lady Trojans had opened up a comfortable 35-16 lead over the Hornets.

The team has now lost eight straight and 10 of its last 11 games to fall to 6-15 overall and 2-13 in the EPC, heading into the season finale against Whitehall on Wednesday. Whether it’s the losing or simply a long season, the team appears to simply be worn down, although Scheitrum hasn’t seen signs of that until Monday night’s loss.

“They didn’t [look worn down], but they sure looked it today, sadly, all teams did,” said Scheitrum. “The junior varsity team played with that same level of sluggishness. It just wasn’t there tonight.”

The 39-point loss was the largest margin of the season for a team playing without injured junior Kiyae White and senior Destanee Watkins, who is no longer on the team. While they’re taking their lumps, some of the younger players are seeing more minutes and showing what they can do with the opportunities they’re being given. Junior Zoe Stein led the team in scoring with nine points and showed tenacious defense, something that the team has lacked.

“Zoe stepped up and did a really good job and kept trying to attack and was playing good defense,” said Scheitrum. “Sometimes, it looked like she was playing one-on-five, because we were just standing around watching everything go on. Zoe kept playing hard and did a nice job for us tonight.”

The season wraps up Wednesday night at home against Whitehall (13-8, 9-6), who pulled off a 38-35 win over Parkland last Friday night. The game will be Senior Night, the final home game for seniors Jenna Lessel and Vanessa Huber.