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Sports
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2022 Prep basketball: Patrick Henry at Hanover 6:00 p.m./7:30 p.m.
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2022 Prep basketball: Atlee at Mechanicsville 6:15 p.m./7:45 p.m.
| Youth, High School, College, Recreational & Professional
Patriots get much-needed wins at Atlee
By Rob Witham for Th e Local
MECHANICSVILLE — It was the perfect combination of youth and experience. Players who knew no better paired with a grizzled veteran who knew exactly what needed to be done.
In spite of being assessed a pregame technical foul and watching the Atlee Raiders break open an early 7-0 lead, Patrick Henry’s boys basketball team hung around in the first half, took the lead in the third period, then held on to earn a critical 57-50 victory, a win not just over a rival, but against a team just above them in the standings in Region 4B.
“We’re coming down to the end, and everybody’s jockeying for, trying to move up in the bracket, man,” noted Patriots head coach Randy Anderson. “As a county game, a rivalry game, we knew it was going to be tough.”
It was an emotional night as well, as the Raiders honored their nine senior members of the team. The most prolific of the group, Rival Axselle, hit a pair of treys in the first period, the two technical foul shots to start the game, and made a beautiful pass to fellow senior Bronson Davis for a basket to give the Raiders an early 14-5 lead.
Patriot big man Micah Dabney picked up his second personal foul with 2:31 left in the first, meaning senior Christian Berry would have a load to bear in the paint. First, it was defensively, helping Patrick Henry keep it close in the first half.
After Axselle hit a trey to up the lead to 22-14 with 5:50 left in the half, he would help repel not one, but two Patrick Henry rallies, making 4-of-5 free throw shots in the last two minutes of the half to allow the Raiders to take a precarious 30-29 edge to halftime.
“Grit. Straight grit and toughness,” Anderson said of his team’s defensive performance down the stretch in the first half. “In the first half of the season, you probably would have been looking at a team that had their heads down, and [Atlee’s] lead probably would have (increased). The second half of the season? Everybody understands who they are now.”
That understanding helped a third period unfold which stunned the Raider faithful in attendance. Berry would make a basket down low, then hit a reverse layup to give Patrick Henry the lead at 37-36 midway through the third.
Then the freshmen contributed. Aiden Trimiew buried a jumper, then, later, Landon Peterson, who scored the first five points of the game for Patrick Henry, scored off a steal, part of an 11-2 run to end the third period as the Patriots took
Dave Lawrence/The Local
Atlee’s Rival Axselle (13) gets fouled by Patrick Henry’s Christian Berry (5) in the Patriots’ 57-50 come-frombehind win over the Raiders Thursday night. Axselle led all scorers with 25 points.
Patriot, Mustang swimmers get late laps in
By Dave Lawrence Sports Editor
MECHANICSVILLE — Pandemics and winter weather can make a mess of sports schedules, and both phenomena have done just that with respect to Hanover County’s high school swim season.
While the 2021-22 season is being held at its normal time and is of its normal length, COVID-19 protocols and winter weather postponements have meant that some swimmers haven’t had a chance to get times in events they might otherwise be able to compete in during postseason.
Wednesday, some Mechanicsville and Patrick Henry swimmers got the chance to do just that before time runs out in the regular season.
“We’re this late in the season and still had some swimmers with no times,” said Patrick Henry head coach Bob Flanagan. “It was great getting some individuals in events they hadn’t been able to do yet, which will then qualify them potentially for regionals and states.
“But overall, we did well. We had a couple of top times tonight and, I think, really started to solidify the end of the season.”
Team-wise, the Patriots won both the boys and girls competitions, and did so with nearly identical scores in each: 91-65 for the boys and 90-66 for the girls.
Mechanicsville head coach Jennifer Vieni had no complaints.
“It went really well. We had some really tight races in the relays and some of the individual events,” Vieni said. “It was good to see them cheer each other on and come out on top for a decent amount of them.
Dave Lawrence/The Local
Above, Patrick Henry’s Michael Causey seems halfsubmerged as he swims to victory in the boys 100-yard backstroke in 58.54 in a swim meet between Patrick Henry and Mechanicsville at Burkwood Swim & Racquet Club Wednesday night. Left, Mechanicsville’s Whitney Speeks starts a turn during the girls 100-yard backstroke. Speeks won in 1:10.75.
It was just a really strong meet all-around.” Mechanicsville’s boys and girls claimed wins in two of their three respective relays. A Mechanicsville team of James Early, Jacob Brown, Tyler Hill and Alex Pruemer won the boys 200-yard medley relay in 1:48.00. Pruemer, Brown, Early and Hill repeated with a win in the 200 freestyle relay in 1:37.72.
Whitney Speeks, MacKenzie Strohhacker, Megan Davis and Olivia Minton won the girls 200 medley relay in 2:05.25. Speeks, Strohhacker, Davis and Minton likewise won the 200 freestyle relay in 1:52.69.
The Patriots swept the 400 freestyle relays. Cole Nuckols, Deklan Cauthorne, Ian Balut and Hayden Bartz won the boys 400 relay in 3:57.12. Lily Luck, Ansleigh Toone, Carolyn Wright and Caroline Cox won the girls 400 in 4:46.59.
Dave Lawrence can be reached at dlawrence@mechlocal.com.
Yellow Jackets don’t let loss cramp their style
By Rob Witham for Th e Local
ASHLAND — Understanding that the global pandemic had a hand in this statistic, it’s still very impressive.
Up until Wednesday night, Randolph-Macon women’s basketball coach Lindsey Burke hadn’t lost an Old Dominion Athletic Conference (ODAC) game. Her Yellow Jackets were 8-0 this season when they took the floor to battle fellow 8-0 Washington and Lee. And from the start, the game, for the home team, was played on an uphill incline.
Down by 12 at halftime, and 10 after three periods, Randolph-Macon found a way to have not one, but two chances to force overtime before falling 52-49 in a game that felt more like a playoff game than a regular season affair.
Hurting the Yellow Jacket cause? Abysmal shooting in the lane in the first half, watching shot after shot bounce off the rim and into the arms of a waiting General defender.
“The game probably would’ve been better had we made a few of those in the first half,” Burke said, giving Washington and Lee credit for their performance. “We’re going to use this as a learning experience. I’m sure we will see them again down the line.”
One important factor in the contest was, even with the level of physicality overall, the officials were allowing play, not calling the first foul of the game until 2:02 left in the first period, when the Generals hit two free throws for a 13-8 lead. Freshman Juliana Park’s two 3-pointers late in the quarter cut their deficit to 18-14 after one.
Washington & Lee would extend the margin heading to halftime as Randolph-Macon made just 4-of-18 shots from the floor in the second stanza. Compounding the issue was the Yellow Jackets’ inability to create free throw opportunities, earning none in the first half.
Down 36-24 heading into the third period, RandolphMacon had to better incorporate forward Aimee DeBell into the offense, who scored her only two points of the first half just before intermission. The senior hit two short jumpers early in the period, followed by a Catherine Kagey reverse layup to cut the deficit to 36-30. DeBell shaved the margin to five with a pair of free throws midway through the quarter.
While Washington and Lee struggled in their shooting game, the Yellow Jackets couldn’t take full advantage, as the Generals scored six points in the final 55 seconds of the frame, returning their lead to double digits at 45-35.
Many teams would wilt at this point. Instead, Burke’s ballers started climbing the mountain again, as DeBell, again, scored the first four points of the period. Kate Groninger answered with a layup for a 49-39 Washington and Lee lead with 7:18 remaining. They would be the Generals’ last points for the next five-plus minutes.
Cheridan Hatfield scored two layups, the second off a Becca Anthony steal with 4:11 to play to draw RandolphMacon within four at 49-45. By then, the momentum had, for the first time in the game, switched to the Yellow Jackets’ side. An Anthony shot banked hard off the glass into the basket 34 seconds later to make it 49-47.
Groninger, who scored eight points on the night, nailed a critical triple to end the 8-0 Yellow Jacket run with just over two minutes to play. It was 52-47, and time for RandolphMacon to, in the immortal words of Kate Bush, go running up that hill one final time.
“I was happy to see our fight,” Burke acknowledged. “We go down 12 at halftime, we dig ourselves out a little bit.”
Kagey was fouled with :55 left and hit a pair at the line to make it a three-point game. The Generals milked the clock, missed a shot, and RandolphMacon rebounded the ball and immediately called timeout to set up a play in the front court to send the game to overtime.
Park launched a trey with nine seconds left, missed, got her own rebound, and called
Dave Lawrence/The Local
Randolph-Macon forward Aimee DeBell (21) launches a jumper over the hands of Washington and Lee forward Kathryn Vandiver (33) in the Yellow Jackets’ 52-49 loss to the visiting Generals in a battle between the top two teams in the ODAC Wednesday.
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a 46-38 lead.
Atlee responded with a change defensively into a 1-3-1 zone, practically stopping the Patrick Henry offensive rhythm, making them step back and reassess what to do with each possession. To the casual fan, it may have looked like the Patriots were milking the clock. For Anderson, it was a case of solving a problem he’d seen before, and trusting his players, both young and old, to do so.
The first four minutes of the fourth saw each team score just two points. Then, the Raiders hit a final stride. When senior Jacob Gompers made two free throws with 1:09 left, it ended an 8-1 Atlee run to cut the lead to 49-48.
With Trimiew and Peterson carefully possessing the ball, it would be Berry who would draw the fouls, then, calmly, make four of the Patriots’ eight free throws in the final minute for the 57-50 win. Peterson led the Patriots with 18 points, while Berry added 14 and Trimiew 11. Axselle led all scorers with 25 points.
The result was big in the Region 4B standings. It was Atlee’s fifth straight loss, now 7-11, but still in seventh place in the standings. The Patriots, now 6-10, drew within a half-point of the Raiders, but also have Spotsylvania ahead of them in eighth. The top four teams earn byes out of the first round, while seeds 5-8 will host seeds 9-12 in the opening games. The Patriots need to move up one more position to start their postseason journey in Ashland.
Earlier, in the girls game, T’Niyah Baylor, a senior who may not have received as many accolades as others on the Patrick Henry squad, finished a great week with an 18-point performance as the Patriots bested Atlee 64-14 to improve to 9-3. Earlier in the week, Baylor went for 22 points as Patrick
Dave Lawrence/The Local
Patrick Henry’s Landon Peterson (3) goes long in the Patriots’ 57-50 win over the Raiders Thursday. He led PH with 18 points.
Henry outpaced Henrico 74-48. “This team, we’re more like a family. Like sisters,” Baylor said when asked how much fun it is to be on this Patrick Henry team. “We communicate really well on and off the court, so it makes it more fun when you’re with a team you’ve known for a long time. We’ve been playing since middle school.”
Logan Nuckols added 14 points in the Atlee victory to push her career total to 1,166. The Patriots, currently fourth in the Region 4B girls standings behind Hanover, Powhatan and Mechanicsville, host Mills Godwin Wednesday before traveling to exact revenge on the Hawks for an early January loss on Friday at 6 p.m.
Rob Witham can be reached at sports@mechlocal.com.
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timeout, giving Burke one last opportunity to scheme a gameextending shot. Anthony got open at the top of the key, but her launch at the horn, like so many shots early in the game, bounced off the rim and away from the net. The Generals erupted in celebration, taking first place exclusively in the ODAC at 9-0, while the Yellow Jackets moved to 8-1.
“We got great looks at the basket,” Burke said when asked about the final two plays. “We’ll be better because of that. In more situations like that, I know we’ll be ready to hit them.”
DeBell led the Yellow Jackets with 12 points, while Park had 11, Kagey scored 10, while Hatfield and Anthony each had seven.
There was no letdown from Randolph-Macon from the loss as they traveled to Ferrum Saturday. After allowing the Panthers to score 24 points in a fast-paced first period which saw the Yellow Jackets trailing by four, the defense stiffened, and Ferrum scored just five points in the second quarter, then only four in the third as Randolph-Macon ran away with a 67-47 triumph.
The Panthers made just 2-of-14 shots in the second period, and only 2-of-10 in the third. Up 35-29 at the half, the Yellow Jackets (11-4, 9-1 ODAC) began the second half on an 8-0 run. At one point, Randolph-Macon outscored Ferrum 44-11 over a span of 23:05.
This is a critical week to learn lessons from their loss as the Yellow Jackets host Mary Washington in a rematch of a Nov. 29 affair won by the Eagles in overtime in Fredericksburg, followed by a home game with the remaining unbeaten team in the ODAC: Roanoke, on Friday night.
Rob Witham can be reached at sports@mechlocal.com.
