Starting the New Year off right, the Lady Vikings easily handled the Port Townsend Redskins on Saturday, Jan. 2, beating them 42-23 on Redskin home ground.
“The Port Townsend team isn’t even in our league,” Coach Terry Moran-Hodge said. “They play in an 1A school, in a league on the Olympic Peninsula.”
A league in a bigger demographic than Orcas, in other words.
The Lady Vikings team has gone 7-0 so far this season. It should be noted that the team won 12 out of 13 of their games last year.
And with senior talent like Lanie Padbury, Stephanie Shaw, and Alison O’Toole, it’s no wonder.
Against Port Townsend, Padbury led in individual scoring with 13 points, followed by Shaw and O’Toole, who both scored 10 for Orcas.
Padbury also had 12 rebounds for her team while April Hofmann garnered eight rebounds and O’Toole and Shaw both had several as well.
“We’ve been off on break since December 27,” Moran-Hodge said, “but we’ve been practicing quite a bit. The team was rusty in their shooting but they did a great job of playing solid, aggressive defense.”
The Orcas team believes in a full court press and uses it to their advantage.
“It’s our bread and butter,” Moran-Hodge said. “They (the team) like that defensive intensity. It always helps our game and it forces the other team into a lot of turnovers.”
The Vikings did a good job of getting to the foul line and capitalizing on those opportunities as well. The team took 23 free throws, and out of those they were able to score 16 points.
“That’s a 70 percent hit rate. They could do better, but that’s a good start,” Moran-Hodge said. “Padbury and Shaw were the primary free throw participants as the top scorers for Orcas; they get in there under the hoop and get fouled. It’s just what happens.”
Orcas kept up their intensity throughout the game and led 15-7 in the first quarter, and increased their lead each quarter until the fourth when fouls became interruptive.
“When they put it all together it is really something,” Moran-Hodge commented. “We played Lummi on the 22 of December. It was not a league game for us and we did beat them 39-21. Lanie was on vacation and we were down several players because of the holidays. Stephanie scored 21 points and O’Toole had 16 rebounds, so they were trying to fill the void left by the out of towners. Lummi’s a strong team. That was a good game for us.”
But Orcas needs to watch out for Darrington and La Conner. The polls show that Darrington is first in the league with La Conner second, and Orcas as third. The Lady Vikings want to disprove those projected rankings in the worst way, and they’re well on the path to doing that.
“All seven teams we play are tough, but those three, if you include Friday Harbor, are the toughest. Those are the ones we can’t be asleep at,” Moran-Hodge said.
The Vikings play in Friday Harbor on Friday, Jan. 8. Time to be decided.
