Lady Cardinals Will Play For District Championship

In last Thursday’s home district playoff game a lot was on the line for the Lady Cardinals.  A win over the Lady Trojans would not only send the Lady Cardinals to the district championship game but would also automatically qualify them for the state tournament.  A loss would send Soda Springs to the consolation side of the bracket forcing them to win out there and then have to win a play-in game in order to qualify for state.  Fortunately for the Cardinals it wouldn’t come to that.

In the first quarter of Thursday’s match up the Cardinals came out with great pressure on the Trojans.  The good defensive pressure was accompanied by a pair of big three point shots from Goodin and Gronning.  All of this helped earn the Lady Cardinals a first quarter lead of six points.  As the second quarter kicked off the Lady Cardinals got a little sloppy committing a handful of turnovers on bad passing.  However as the quarter progressed Soda Springs was able to continue to outscore the Trojans and the teams headed into the halftime break with the Lady Cardinals leading by nine.  Coming out of the break the Lady Trojans stunned the Lady Cardinals with an uptick of pressure and tried to cut into the lead.  Eventually the Lady Cardinals got their feet back under them and were able to take back control of the game.  The third quarter ended with Soda Springs now leading by fourteen.  In the fourth quarter the Cardinals main string players dominated the Trojans for the first six minutes of the period.  At that point Coach Gronning pulled the starters and put in several jv players.  The Trojans made a small run in the last two minutes against the back ups but it was far too little too late.  The Cardinals earned the win and a trip to the district championship where they will face Malad.  Gracie Moldenhauer played a great game with several steals and drives to the basket.  The team as a whole shot twenty-five foul shots where they made just over fifty percent.  The Lady Cardinals will have to play flawless against the tough Malad team.  The Dragons haven’t lost a game since week one of the season.  The Lady Cardinals did give them one of their better games recently losing by nine points in their last match up.  This week’s championship game takes place at the neutral site of West Side High School on Wednesday night at 7 p.m.

Cardinals 14 9 16 10 49

Trojans 8 6 11 7 32

C.Gronning 9, R.Harris 5, A.Goodin 12, G.Moldenhauer 15, M.Kempe 2, J.Rasmussen 2, E.Wood 1, H.Mumford 2, J.Tingey 1