By Jeremy McDonald

Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com

SALEM, Ore.–  The Chemeketa Community College Women’s Basketball team knew that this was a measuring stick to see where they are at as a team and how they can improve moving forward with Portland Community College Wednesday on the road.

Lane entered the NWAC South Region match Saturday afternoon undefeated and came out  aggressive and shot the ball well against the Storm, jumping out to a 40-21 halftime lead in their 83-41 win.  Snapping Chemekta’s three-game winning streak and handing the Storm their first League loss of the season.

“We just talked about it in the locker room that even though they beat us, we got better,” McNary-grad Bekah Grimmer said. “We learned things that we need to work on and we improved on getting up on D, running and not giving up.  We’re out people, so we got a small team…but we know we got to keep our heads up high and we’re going to go into PCC knowing that we know how to work hard and use what we just got better with in that game.”

The Storm had seven athlete’s dressed down and all saw significant playing time in the game Saturday.  Grimmer and Gervais-grad Bella Vasquez each scored in double-figures, Grimmer with 12 and Vasquez with ten as both finished with five rebounds apiece.  South Salem-grad Ellyson Haytas led Chemeketa with six rebounds.

With one game next week against Portland Community College on Wednesday, the extra time to heal up and work on the little things as they’ll have Umpqua on the road February 2 and host Linn-Benton February 5 

“The pressure up top was nice, we need that so that we know how to handle the pressure up top.  I think it really helped us, we got a lot better today and got better as a team.   This next week is going to be great,” Vasquez said.  “We’re going to come in on Monday practice working hard and come in with the mentality that just because we got one blowout loss it’s not going to stop us working harder.  

West Salem-grad Maddie Bertsch recorded two steals, two rebounds, two assist and a block in 19 minutes for the Titans.  Lane’s Sierra Schepple had a game-high 22 points and Bella Hamel scored 17 points with seven rebounds.

Photos By Jeremy McDonald