The Shadow
CHATHAM — Chatham has a young girls basketball team.
Tuesday on the regional stage, the youth held their own and then some.
The trio of sophomore Charity Wilson and freshmen Nysheia Miller and Quanadra Tunstall rolled up a combined 61 points in a 68-39 Class 2, Region C win over Alleghany.
Miller led the way with 24, Wilson had 22 and Tunstall scored 15.
Maggie Rooklin paced the Mountaineers with 11 points, Erin Harden had nine and Kendell Keene scored seven.
The Cavaliers scored the first 13 points of the game, but held just a 19-15 lead after a quarter.
The Mountaineers were still within four, 25-21, late in the second period.
But a 27-6 third-quarter advantage did in the visitors.
Miller had 12 in the big period, while Tunstall added nine.
“We fell behind early, it took a while to adjust to that style of play,” said Mountaineer coach Jeff Wolfe. “Once we did, we came back. But we never got used to that style of officiating.”
Chatham (17-6) moves on to the regional semifinals and a match-up with No. 1 seeded Martinsville. The Bulldogs ousted Nelson County Tuesday, 45-43.
Thursday’s other semifinal at Bassett High School will pair Floyd County and Gretna. Floyd beat Radford Tuesday, 51-42, and Gretna topped Patrick County, 57-53.
The loss brought a close to the season for the fifth-seeded Mountaineers (15-8).
“I feel like we had a great season,” Wolfe said. “Coming into the year we didn’t have the roster that we thought we had. We played a lot of close games. In the past few years, we played close games, but lost them. This year we played close games and won some of them.”
Alleghany closed the regular season with four wins in five games. The wins came over Glenvar, Stuarts Draft, Radford and Giles.
“As a coach losing is sometimes easier to take when you have another one to game plan for,” Wolfe said. “That’s why the last game is always tough.
That last loss kills me. But honestly, this year I didn’t even think about what could be the last game until this morning. That’s how much fun I was having with this group.”
Rooklin, Becca Gibson, Emma Nicely, Kierstin Mundy and Kerry Ann Byer make up the AHS girls basketball Class of 2020.
Rooklin ended her career with 1,160 points, second on the all-time Alleghany scoring list to only Angie Martin Baldwin’s 1,235.
“That’s a huge loss,” said Wolfe of the senior class. “It’s really been a family this year — no drama. We lose a big part of that chemistry. We will count on people like Erin (Harden) and Gracie (Conner) to be able to keep that on track.”
