Girls varsity basketball team celebrates Senior Night, gets ready for postseason
Pelham Middle School Gym- The Pelham Girls’ Varsity Basketball team celebrated Senior Day with a win against Harrison, who they lost to in January. The game started off with a speech from Coach Pitrulle honoring seniors Samantha Volpe, Meredith Kuster, Lauren Kuster, Charlotte Edmunds, Lucy Conway, and Madelyn Dunbar. Pitrulle gave a speech in memory of the girl’s time playing basketball at PMHS. He spoke about how the girls have grown and how they are going on to do great things.
The first quarter started with Pelham winning the tip-off and scoring the first points in seconds. This quarter was a slow one with Harrison ending in the lead 9-8. The second quarter starts off with Pelham again scoring the first points, but even though they started off strong, the first half ends with the Pelicans down 17-13.
The second half picks up with Harrison scoring the first points as their shot clock runs down. Brooke Gates scores an amazing 3 pointer but Harrison answers back quickly, scoring 2. An offensive foul is called which sends Pelham to the line. Alexis Cornachio hits both of her free-throws, bringing the Pelicans closer to the Huskies. Samantha Volpe makes another layup, one of the many she makes in the game. Lucy Conway then tied up the game with a beautiful 3 pointer. The teams scramble for the ball and Harrison pulls ahead again. After Volpe missed two free-throws, Meredith Kuster tied the game with a layup. After a few more minutes of play the third quarter ends with a Huskies lead, 31-30
The fourth quarter starts with Harrison scoring the first basket. Meredith Kuster makes an amazing layup in traffic to open the scoring for the Pelicans. A foul called on Pelham, causing quite a commotion among the Pelham students in the stand. Harrison leads by 4 points, with just 4 minutes remaining in the game. Volpe comes up with another key layup. From the sidelines, Pelican fans and players all urge their players to take the lead. Lauren Kuster sinks a 3 pointer which puts Pelham in the lead, with 2 minutes left to go. The Huskies make their 2 free-throws and Harrison is up by 1 point. Cornachio sinks a 3 pointer of her own to put Pelham up by 2. Volpe makes 2 straight layups in a row bringing Pelham’s lead to 6 points. On the Harrison side on the court, Volpe gets tangled in a mess of bodies, falls and gets injured. Volpe is then taken off the court. Harrison gets the ball, with Pelham up by 5. With under a minute left, both Harrison and Pelham make free throws bringing the score to 49-42 with 14.3 seconds left. The Huskies scored the final basket, with 7 seconds remaining. The clock runs down, and Pelham wins the game 49-44. Sam Volpe led the way, scoring 12 points, with Meredith Kuster scoring 10, and Lauren Kuster scoring 9.
The Pelicans followed this game dropping two nail-biters, one to Walter Panas, and the other to Byram Hills. Their regular season schedule over, they now wait until later in the week to get their seed for the playoff, and to see if they got an outbracket bye.
Gabby Ahitow is a senior at Pelham Memorial High School. She has been with the paper since it first started in 2018. Gabby has written for the Colonial...