Lady Vikings start season off with a bang

PLUM CITY — Although the first four minutes of the game were a little too close for comfort for coach Joe Doucette, the Colfax girls’ basketball team came back from being a point down to take a 60-27 win over the Plum City Blue Devils in the opening game of the season for both teams Nov. 20.

 After missing their first seven shots of the game, the Vikings held a slim 8-7 lead after a quarter of play before they got the wake up call and poured in 27 second quarter points while holding Plum City to a lonely bucket, allowing them to take a 35-9 halftime lead. Seven three pointers helped their cause as Mallie Doucette, Hannah Hover and Dannielle Dachel each canned a pair while Alexis Rudi added one in the half.

“We started very slow but we started to move the ball better and played much better the rest of the half,” coach Doucette said.”We also started shooting the ball better and we forced a lot of turnovers while committing just one ourselves. Once we relaxed we had a lot of good possessions at both ends.”

Braanna Steen dropped in a pair of free throws while Taylor Shipman and Chey Olson both hit a deuce to help increase the Viking’s lead to 51-17 heading into the final quarter and McKayla Harmon and Katlin Sauerwein both got into the scoring column in the final stanza as Harmon connected on two free tosses and Sauerwein hit a deuce.

“We had a lot of people play very well and we are very deep this year,” Coach Doucette said. “We have about 7-8 talented kids returning who all had a nice year last year on the junior varsity and we will need our experienced kids to set the example and help some of the younger kids develop,” he added.

Mallie Doucette led the Colfax scoring with 13 points while Hover added 11 and Dachel 10. The Vikings were 11 of 20 from the charity stripe and nailed nine triples in the win. They will host an always tough Hayward team Tuesday Nov.27 in a non-conference battle before resuming conference play at Spring Valley Dec. 4.

Colfax (60) FG-FTM-FTA-PTS-Doucette 5-0-0-13, Hover 3-3-4-11-, Dachel 3-1-3-10, Rudi 2-2-2-7, Olson 2-1-2-5, Shipman 2-0-2-4, Steen 1-2-2-4, R. Prochnow 1-0-0-2, Harmon 0-2-4-2, Sauerwein 1-0-0-2

Plum City (27) H. Van Holtum 1-7-9-10, S. Gilles 4-0-0-9, E. Danzinger 2-4-6-8

Three Pointers: Doucette 3, Dachel 3, Hover 2, Rudi 1, Gilles 1