Lady Bobcats dream big

Victory over No. 1 Los Lunas shows they can be the best

FRUITLAND, N.M.

If there is one thing the Bloomfield Lady Bobcats are sure of it’s that they’re not the same team they were last season.

Bloomfield was a silent force last season but this season, there is nothing silent about them. The Lady Bobcats were 13-3 going into district this week coming off a championship victory in the Hope Christian Tournament held over the weekend.

Bloomfield senior captain Brandi Alcantar said the recent success says a lot about the team this season.

“We’re definitely a force to reckon with,” she said. “You can’t creep up on anybody like we did a couple years ago. People just know that we’re going to give it all we have in those 32 minutes and we’re just going to play.”

The Lady Bobcats picked up a new layer of confidence over the weekend after defeating Class 5A top seed Los Lunas 54-48 in the semifinals. They also defeated Shiprock 62-46 in the championship game and West Las Vegas 62-46 in the first round.

But out of the three games over the weekend, the victory over Los Lunas was especially important as Bloomfield lost two already at the start of the season. They lost to the Lady Tigers 54-40 in their third game of the season and again 67-31 in Los Lunas’ tournament in December.

Bloomfield head coach Tom Adair said before the weekend match-up with Los Lunas and at the turn of the new year, his team decided they weren’t going to lose to them again.

He said his team wanted to prove that there was more to them.

“The fact that Los Lunas is number one in 5A was huge,” he said. “We lost to them pretty good in their championship game. It was good to see how the girls bounced back.

“We started on Jan. 1st, we came back, we had a meeting with the girls, and the girls just committed themselves,” he said.

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