DRIVE AND GRIT
Head Coach Colbey Stumpf led his team into battle last weekend, March 3-4, for the regional competition. The Holyoke Dragon boys basketball team started regionals strong with a nine-point win against Heritage Christian. However, leading up to the final seconds of the boys’ game against Evangelical Christian Academy, Stumpf said, they “struggled to stop dribble-drive penetration at times” and “gave up a few too many outside shots.” Losing that last game by one point, the Dragons bussed their way back home.
“They showed a lot of drive and grit throughout the season,” Stumpf said.
Levi Hermsen and Raul Bertinato of Heritage Christian’s Eagles held the court during their matchup with the Dragons by making two consecutive outside shots. Hermsen fouled Holyoke and played his hand at the free-throw line. One point on the line and the two outside 3-pointers bumped the score to seven for Heritage in just a couple of minutes.
Holyoke’s Reid Sprague, meanwhile, started to balance out the score by landing a breakaway layup. Accomplice Cooper Goldenstein made two out of the two chances for a free throw after Reid’s layup. Then Reid made another layup, and once the ball was back in the hands of Holyoke, Cash Weber made a 3-pointer to lend to the score. Following each bucket the Dragons sank, the Heritage Christian boys scored six more points. The score for this first quarter was 9-13, with Heritage Christian taking the lead.
Holyoke’s brother team of Cash and Colby Weber, during the second quarter, scored nine points, followed by another layup by Chase Johnson. The stands started to see some scoring from Heritage Christian’s Hermsen again through a layup. Eagles Nehemiah Baldwin and Shane Moseley followed along with each layup of their own. This time, the final score of the first half was 20-19, with the Dragons in a more comfortable spot looking out to State.
The third-quarter tempo picked up. Heritage Christian made 12 points. Bertinato made most of the points: seven in all, mainly through free throws. Holyoke kept up the pace. Seeing scoring from Cash, Wyatt and Reid Sprague, Holyoke could pull off another quarter in the lead with the scoreboard reading 33-31.
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