QUECHEE — It took about half of a season last winter for the Mid Vermont Christian girls basketball team to find its form. It took about 1½ quarters on Friday night.
Shaking off first-game jitters, the Eagles hit 12 of 19 shots from the floor in the second period to pull away for a 65-50 VPA Division IV win over Hazen. MVCS (1-0) scored 15 of the last 17 points of the stanza — including the final 12 — for a 38-25 halftime lead and used the second half to keep the Wildcats (0-1) at a distance.
“We flummoxed ourselves; our defense was just off,” MVCS coach Chris Goodwin said. “I think it was just nerves in our first game. They shot the ball well; we shot the ball well. Both teams might have missed five shots in the first quarter, and they were beating us down court, too. Once we started getting back on defense and matching up better, we got comfortable.”
Before they could make their program-first run to a D-IV state final, the Eagles had to get used to a new dynamic: players from two schools jelling together. The four Sharon Academy contributors from last winter are down to two, but fold that into a veteran MVCS core and the Eagles have the potential to finish off what the coronavirus pandemic denied one game too soon last March.
The Eagles were supposed to head to White River Valley for their opener on Friday, but the Wildcats had to cancel 24 hours earlier due to a COVID-19 positive at the school. That’s when Goodwin learned this season could resemble what rolled through Major League Baseball last summer, when schedules had to be adjusted on the fly at the whims of the virus.
“There’s a lot of emails going around, I believe, the entire high school circuit, people looking to pick up games,” Goodwin said. “It’s kind of similar to (baseball), when they were just switching stuff up and finding teams. We had a couple of emails out; these guys called, said, ‘Hey, we’ve only got eight games, we’re free that night.’ They said they’d come down. We were like, ‘OK, we’re ready. We’ll play.’ ”
It took a short while for MVCS to follow through.
Hazen presented a roadblock in big, mobile center Alleigh Gabarge (team-high 13 points) ringed by quick guards, and the Eagles had trouble adapting. The hosts’ first eight points consisted off six free throws wrapped around a Hayley Goodwin scoop. The Wildcats held a 13-12 lead after one quarter.
The teams traded the lead a whopping 14 times through the midway point of the second stanza, when Mid Vermont went on its decisive run. Hayley Goodwin’s right-wing 3-pointer with 3:36 left in the half broke a 23-23 tie. When Harley Papineau sank a corner jumper to get within a point, Sydney Goodwin buried an 18-footer in response to ignite the 12-point gallop.
Hayley Goodwin scored eight points in the run and finished with a game-high 33 for the Eagles. Sister Sydney had 15 on the night. MVCS also received helpful play on the wings from Rachel-Horner Richardson, Molly Kinnarney (six points) and Lydia Eastman, the latter two making up this year’s Sharon contingent.
The five are either juniors or seniors, and all want to grab the championship COVID took away.
“When you’ve got five players on the court and they’re all fundamentally sound and do different things well,” Chris Goodwin said, “it’s easy.”
The Eagles host Leland & Gray on Tuesday night.
Greg Fennell can be reached at gfennell@vnews.com or 603-727-3226.