Cardinals crushed by Cashmere

CASHMERE — It was a good news, bad news trip to Cashmere on Saturday for the Lady Cardinals basketball team.

The bad news first: the Cardinals traveled seven hours round-trip to Cashmere on Saturday, Jan. 11, after Friday’s winter storm, only to take a 63-27 beating from the top-ranked Bulldogs, led by powerhouse senior phenom Hailey Van Lith.

The good news was the team got a chance to meet former National Basketball Association pro Kobe Bryant, who attended the game to watch Van Lith, who had trained with Bryant at his Mamba Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks, Calif., the past summer, according to multiple news and social media sources.

But while the former Lakers star may have shone briefly in Cashmere, it wasn’t on the Cardinals, who played the first half perhaps a bit star-struck, allowing the Bulldogs defense to maintain an iron fist under their basket and hold the Cards to just seven points, while allowing the Bulldogs to score 39 of their own.

“We struggled obviously,” head coach Kyle Lundberg said. “We dug ourselves into a deep hole in the first half.”

Lundberg laid it out for his team in the locker room during halftime: they were behind, probably too far to recover. But behind didn’t mean defeat or continuing to be competitive.

“If we’re going to go down, we’re going to go down fighting. We’re not giving up,” he said during a phone interview. “We were going to go down swinging.”

So despite the odds, the Lady Cards came back out and competed, coming back in the second half with their game faces on, scoring 11 in the third while holding the Bulldogs to 15, then holding them to nine while scoring nine themselves in the fourth and competing up to the final buzzer.

Lexie Redell led Medical Lake with 10 points, followed by Jaycee Oliver with five and Ellie Haas four.

Van Lith, who scored a whopping 35 points against the Cardinals, is no slouch to defend, and has been a thorn in area basketball teams sides for the past four years. Among other accomplishments, she has played on two women’s USA World Cup teams in 2018 and 2019 and has won multiple state and national basketball awards, according to ESPN.

While Lundberg said Cashmere as a team had improved — Medical Lake played them twice last year — Van Lith will be graduating this year.

“That is really good news,” Lundberg said. “It’s good news for everybody in 1A.”

Despite the loss to Cashmere, the Lady Cards remain undefeated at 3-0 and in first place in the Northeast A, and 3-7 overall.

The Cardinals have a full plate this week. They were scheduled to play three league games this week on the road — Newport (1-3, 6-6) on Tuesday, Deer Park (3-1, 8-3) on Wednesday in a game originally schedule for Friday, Jan, 10, but postponed due to winter weather, and Freeman (2-1, 8-3) on Friday.

Then it’s across the West Plains on Saturday, Jan. 18, to face Cheney (0-3, 2-7 in the Great Northern League) at the annual Spirit Games in Eastern State University’s Reese Court. Tip-off is scheduled for 6 p.m.

Lee Hughes can be reached at [email protected].