A year after one of the youngest teams in the state slogged to the worst record in the program’s history, Rivendell’s fledgling Raptors are beginning to grow some wings.
Rivendell outhustled and outmuscled visiting Poultney 69-45 on a rainy Friday in Orford to notch its third win of the season, tripling the team’s total from the year before with fifteen games still to play in a weather-affected season.
The Raptors led 26-21 at halftime before outscoring the Blue Devils 24-14 in the third quarter for a commanding advantage and cruised out the stretch. Twelve of the 13 players on the Rivendell roster scored in the win.
“Our intensity,” Rivendell coach Andy Perkins said when asked what went right. “That’s really been a focus for us this season. We’re coming off a really hard year last year, and so anything we can improve on we want to.”
Perkins, who won the program’s first state title in 2023 in his first year on the job with an experienced roster he inherited but had experience with, saw a solid season in 2023-24 with the last of the championship core before the bottom fell out in 2024-25. The Raptors finished 1-19, with just three of those losses coming by single digits, before suffering a 64-point loss at the hands of eventual state champion Danville in the first round of the playoffs. The youth of the roster, however, with just two seniors and a junior, left promise that things might turn in 2025-26.
“We really wanted to buckle down on our effort, hustle and defense,” Perkins said of the growth formula. “Start from there and let the offense take care of itself.”
That formula of effort, hustle and defense solved a majority of Rivendell’s offensive issues on Friday night. Despite only making three three-pointers, with two coming in garbage time, the Raptors utilized an effective 1-2-2 full-court press and controlled the offensive glass all night to string together close-range buckets.
“It’s been pretty effective so far,” said Perkins of the press. “It’s going to be something that we work on and make sure we can keep it sharp even through substitutions.”
Rivendell forced 14 turnovers in the first and third quarters, when the press was most active.
The other effective thing working for the Raptors? Size. With a pair of tall forwards in junior Evan Woodward and sophomore Kaleb Harris, Rivendell has a one-two punch in a division where size comes at a premium, and showed it against the Blue Devils.
Woodward finished with a team-high 17 points, followed closely by Harris with 14 in what was a bit of a breakout performance, and both were strong on the glass on both ends of the floor.
“We really used our size to our advantage tonight,” Harris said. “The team was pretty small, and when their big guy fouled out, we really pulled ahead.”
The two playing together at the end of the third quarter keyed a run that effectively closed the game for Rivendell and flashed the potential of a rarely-used lineup.
“Tonight was one of our first times using both of them together,” Perkins said. “Those two have been huge in what we’re doing and what we plan on doing. And they’re both back next year.”
So is nearly everyone else on Rivendell’s roster. With just a lone senior on the roster and a starting lineup of three juniors and two sophomores, Perkins is bullish on the future.
“This team was extremely young last year, and we are still young this year,” said Perkins. “It should only go up from here.”
Rivendell takes on West Rutland on Saturday.