by Declan O’Malley

Contributor

Orcas Island High School has reached the holiday break in its basketball season.

The boys team sits at 1-5 overall, while the girls have a 5-3 overall record. After their two games this week against Sultan and La Conner high schools, the Vikings basketball teams will have a break until Jan. 7, when they will take on the Concrete Lions on the road.

Girls basketball

The Lady Vikings started off their week with a 62-48 win against Sultan High School on Monday, Dec. 16. Ava Ashcraft led OIHS in scoring with 15 points in the game. After the Sultan game, the Lady Vikings battled conference rival La Conner but fell 47-37. In the La Conner game, Charlotte Winter-Lamphere led the Lady Vikings with 17 points, including three 3-pointers.

“Monday-Tuesday games are tricky. We still need a lot of practice time to get in sync with each other. Fortunately, the girls worked really hard to pull out a win against Sultan on Monday,” said OIHS girls Coach Haley Cruz Winchell.

Cruz Winchell continued, “La Conner came out ahead on Tuesday. We couldn’t really find a rhythm on either side of the court, and our shots weren’t falling. We are going to watch that game and learn from it. We look forward to seeing La Conner next time.”

Boys basketball

To start the week, the boys basketball team was handed a tough 52-41 loss to Sultan High School before taking on La Conner.

“The last few games have been tough. We’ve been right there, fighting hard until the end, just coming up short. The defense has looked good; we just gotta work on closing out these games and playing four good quarters of basketball,” said OIHS senior Zane Howard.

In their second game of the week against rival La Conner, the Braves handed the Vikings a 76-69 loss.

“We were in the game for the most part, then our timeouts caught up and stopped our momentum,” said head Coach Ed Lago. “The game against La Conner was frustrating. We have a good team. We definitely could be better. We will not win games if we don’t keep the turnovers below double digits.” Lago also added that he is confident this group will get it together and start playing “Orcas basketball!”

Viking basketball will return to action on Jan. 7 for a conference game against Concrete High School.

Note: Cienna Richardson contributed her player quote for this article.