By Samantha Bonifas
The Silver Lake Lady Mustangs worked hard throughout the regular season to earn the number one seed for sub districts and another opportunity to play in The Barn two more times. They indeed received the number one seed and their third matchup of the season against Lawerence Nelson to kick off their post-season play. The Mustangs had previously beat the Raiders twice and went into the game with the mentality that they would grind out a third win no matter what. The first half was a game of tug of war. The Raiders had an 18-17 lead at half. “Playing a team three times is hard,” said senior Amanda Ehrman. “They knew all of our plays and how we like to do things on the court. We knew we needed to just keep playing our game and grinding to get the win.” Senior Katelyn Karr led the team with 19 points followed by freshman Emma Schmidt with 10. Silver Lake used this motivation to score 21 points in the third quarter. The Mustangs finished the game with a strong fourth quarter to win 46-41 and to advance to the sub district finals.
The Mustangs then took on the Wilcox-Hildreth Falcons for a chance to advance to the district final. Silver Lake jumped to an aggressive start as soon as the buzzer went off and time started clicking down. The Mustangs had a 22-0 lead at the end of the first quarter. Junior Georgi tenBensel hit 12 of her 21 points in the first quarter. The Mustangs continued to shut down the Falcons for the remainder of the game. “It really benefited us to follow our game plan. They couldn’t do much with our press and we changed the way we play defense to shut down the post,” said Ehrman. By the final quarter, the Falcons had no chance to make a comeback and the Silver Lake Lady Mustangs took the D2-6 sub district 53-30 win. “I was super honored to get to play on our home court two more times. We worked hard for it to be there and having my last home game being a win is very special to me,” said Ehrman. The Mustangs look to take on Crawford at Paxton at 6:30 CT on Friday, February 25th for the district final.