Le Mars JV edges Storm Lake 36-35

The Le Mars girls' JV squad kicked off its season last week Tuesday with an intense 36-35 win on the road against Storm Lake.

The Lady Bulldogs were leading 11-4 after the first quarter of play. Despite being outscored 10-9 in the second quarter, Le Mars maintained their lead, 20-14, at half time.

The game got closer in the second half, with the Tornadoes cutting their deficit to three points as the Lady Bulldogs led 29-26 after three quarters of action.

The score got closer in the final quarter and the game went down to the wire for Le Mars as Alex Schuett sunk a pair of free throws in the final 11 seconds to give the Lady Bulldogs a one point advantage and the 36-35 win seconds later.

"[Alex's free throws] put us up by one after we had led pretty much the whole game," coach Gabe Davis said. "We played great defense the last 11 seconds of the game and took a win."

"I thought the girls played hard. We have things to work on but overall we did well."

Leading the squad in the 36-35 win was Leah Clement who netted 18 points. Jess Arnold added six points plus five rebounds.

Kasie Collins pulled down a team-high eight rebounds while Schuett recorded four boards and grabbed three steals.

At the line, Le Mars was 8-for-15 on the night.

"Leah, Alex and Kasie are the sophomore leaders on the team and they all came up with big plays in the final minutes to help the team," Davis said. "We had some girls play with us that hadn't practiced a lot and they did good things to help us to a win."

The JV squad was in action Saturday afternoon at the Hy-Vee Tournament in Le Mars, taking on Hinton prior to the final rounds of the varsity tournament. The Blackhawks took the 28-24 edge over the Lady Bulldogs for the win; however, stats were not available at press time and will be included in a later issue of the Daily Sentinel.