By Josh Lewis, Writer

The Lady Lions basketball team opened the season up on Thursday night the way every team wants to, with a win. It wasn’t pretty, but that didn’t matter to the end result as Salem pulled away down the stretch in a back and forth game over Mitchell 34-30.

Wade Tomlinson is back at the helm as the head coach of the Salem girls basketball team. He said they were very excited to get the win to start the season. “We are all excited. The girls have worked really really hard. Considering the situation we are in, we are missing 13 kids from last year. We only have 1 letter returner. We are starting kids that didn’t even play last year. We knew there would be some rough spots, but wow they played hard. They tried to do everything we asked them to, really we just don’t have enough reps in. But they just played hard.Karissa really stepped up. She didn’t play last year. She’s really stepped up for us and was our leading scorer. She did some good things.”

Both teams struggled with turnovers throughout the game, but the Lady Lions took a 5-3 lead thanks to a bucket from Alexis Maudlin. Mitchell was able to get a lead late in the quarter though with a triple and another basket to make it a 12-7 lead. 

Payslea Chastain buried a corner three to get Salem going at the start of the second quarter. Karissa Hardy got a score in the post to knot the game up at 12. Abby Hardy got a basket in the paint and then Karissa got another score to help Salem start building a lead 15-12 late in the half.

To open the second half the Bluejackets hit back to back triples to take a 20-15 advantage. Karissa got a layup to stop the short run but both teams struggled offensively until the fourth quarter.

Mitchell hit two from the stripe to make it a 25-21 edge with 5:47 left in the game, but then Salem went on their run. Maudlin hit a jumper, and then Abby Hardy added one from the stripe and another bucket to tie the game at 26 with 3:37 left in the game. The Bluejackets hit a few more free throws on separate trips to make it 29-26.

Harley Walters hit a jumper and Maudlin hit a layup to reclaim the lead. On the next trip Maudlin found Abby in the paint with 1:35 left to play. Then Maudlin put the finishing touches on the game with another basket with 1:01 to go and the Lady Lions celebrated their season opening win.

Tomlinson said the team just kept playing hard down the stretch and that helped them take the lead. “They just kept playing hard. One of the things that helped us was Alexis didn’t play a ton because of foul trouble, but she finally got to play some in the fourth quarter. That helped our surge there. Wilson and Abby Hardy dominated the boards. We had 51 rebounds as a team which is amazing. Wilson had six offensive rebounds and that was really big for us. We played some kids that are deep in our bench and they did a great job.”

Salem took one on the chin on Saturday when they traveled to Seymour and came home with a 58-8 loss. Salem will travel to Crawford County on Tuesday.

MHS scoring: Modglin 2, L. Thompson 11, R. Thompson 6, Fountain 2, Lamm 1, Kohlhaas 8

SHS scoring: Chastain 3, A. Hardy 7, Maudlin 9, K. Hardy 10, Walters 2, Wilson 3

Threes: L. Thompson, R. Thompson, Kohlaas 2, Chastain

Payslip Chastain drives to the hoop.

Photos by Josh Lewis.