Wingate girls reach championship round despite outage

Posted by Quentin Jodie | Dec 24, 2014 | Basketball |

FORT WINGATE, N.M.

Lady Bear Ashanti Antonio commits a foul while attempting to block a shot by Destiny Lee of Miyamura on Monday night. (Times photo – Donovan Quintero)

A power outage that lasted for over one week on Dec. 8 has caused havoc for the Wingate girls’ basketball team.

The outage resulted from a failed transformer, which caused the Wingate Lady Bears Holiday Classic to be postponed until this past Monday and Tuesday.

And after the outage was rectified the Lady Bears were unable to put in any practice time since the boys portion of the tournament took up the gym usage.

“We only had one practice before playing this tournament,” Wingate coach Manuel Smith said. “The power outage set us back but we need to get back into the groove of things and get our minds back into basketball.”

Needless to say the Bears seemed out of sync as they struggled to get their footing in the opening day of the six-team tournament on Monday.

In a closely contested game, the Bears outlasted Crownpoint 63-57 before they posted a 72-66 win over Miyamura JV to win their pool.
“I tell you we couldn’t get going,” Smith said of their match with Crownpoint. “We went back-and-forth with them but it seemed like my girls were getting real tired easy. Like I said we had no practice and I could see that in them.”

The Bears would have played Ganado in the championship round on Tuesday afternoon as the Lady Hornets turned back Gallup JV 88-55 before beating Rehoboth 68-41. Results for that game were not available at press time.

“I am so proud of my girls. With no practice time we’ve come this far in this tournament,” Smith said. “We’re in the championship round and it’s a good feeling because it’s been awhile since we’ve been here. I have a bunch of young girls that want to play and they’re well disciplined.”