By Stephen Henderson
The last week of the regular season for the Lady Cougar basketball team of Patrick County High School has been anything but normal. Patrick County lost the final two games of the season and was forced to eliminate playing the final game due to county-wide illness. The Lady Cougars lost to Hidden Valley 31-58 last Monday night and fell to Abingdon 60-52 Wednesday night.
“This past week was quite unusual,” said Lady Cougar Coach Michael Hedrick. “You are prepared for a lot of things, but a massive flu outbreak that resembled the first couple episodes of the “Walking Dead” TV show is not one of them,” he added
“I think the sickness really affected us at Hidden Valley,” he said. “We did not play hard enough and we talked a lot about not using excuses in the future,” he added. “
“We bounced backed and played a very good Abingdon team and came up short, but the coaching staff was very proud of our progress we had shown,” Hedrick said.
In Monday’s game against Hidden Valley, the Lady Cougars fell behind 23-5 after the first quarter and could only score four points in the second.
The Lady Cougar defense just could not get activated until the second half when they cut the Lady Titans scoring to 21 in the half. The final score was 58-31.
Izzy Beasley scored nine points. Autumn Hubbard, Lindsey Marshall and Hannah Roberson each added six points.
In Wednesday’s game at Abingdon, the Lady Cougars played even ball with the Lady Falcons in the first quarter, 19-18, but saw the Lady Falcon defense cut Patrick County’s shooting to only five points to their own 13 points.
The second half showed both teams playing equally with Patrick County outscoring the Lady Falcons by one; however, the Abingdon’s big run in the second period was too much for the Lady Cougars to overcome. Abingdon won 60-52.
Izzy Beasley scored 14 points, including two three-pointers. Elizabeth Cole, Autumn Hubbard and Hannah Roberson each scored 10 points.
The Lady Cougars were to have played Tunstall last Thursday night, but all basketball games were canceled by the school due to illness.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat the fact that I am upset that we did not play the Tunstall game,” said Coach Hedrick. “There were many opportunities for us to play the game, and I felt that our girls deserved to have an opportunity to add another win to their record, but more importantly, I felt our seniors deserved their Senior Night game. It did not affect us negatively, but we all wanted to play that game,” he added.
The Lady Cougars hosted Cave Spring Monday night. The Lady Cougar seniors were honored prior to the start of the game.
