By Jeremy McDonald

jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com

SCIO, Ore.–  Scio’s Kylee Baumgartner once more put on a show Monday evening against Blanchet Catholic.  Showing once more she’s one of the great young talents in 3A moving into her junior season next Winter.

Against the Cavaliers in the PacWest Conference,  Baumgartner  kept the Loggers afloat going into the halftime break up 23-17 thanks to a 11-2 run that featured six contested points in the paint from the sophomore.  The run gave Scio the momentum following Blanchet’s run that had put the Cavs ahead briefly up 15-12 prior to the Loggers rally.

“She’s a beast, she’s good, she knows what she’s doing and she’s young.  She’s just improving, she plays year around and not a lot of us do and she keeps getting better and better, so stopping her is the main goal and Carrie Jones.  They’re both their best players, we just had to stop them and we didn’t do it tonight,” Blanchet’s Alexis Jensen said of   Baumgartner  .  

“It really decides on the first minutes of the game and who’s going to bring it to win the game and we really stepped up in that first half and brought it,”  Baumgartner adds.

The first half was one of those strong halves for Blanchet who’ve been slowly piecing together their consistency this season with just four seniors to five underclassmen and two juniors on their roster.  The improvement this season with the consistency has been good to see points Jensen with Blanchet having one more game left on their schedule.as they travel to Yamhill-Carlton Thursday evening for a 5:30pm.

“It felt good because we’ve been trying to get that all season and now that we finally got that at the end of the season, it helps the younger girls to work their way up next year because they already have that bottom-line.  So they can start from there,” said the senior in Jensen.

Jensen finished with a team-high 11 points and Abby Weber contributed another 10 in the 55-36 road defeat.  And just as Blanchet figured out   Baumgartner  , who finished with 21 points, and slowed her down to seven second half points; everyone around the sophomore post started to hit shots.  

Jones had seven of her ten in the second half, Tyra Lefever scored six of her nine and Adrien Stover scored all five of her points in the third quarter to help carry the momentum of the first half to the second.  All in hopes they can carry it over to Tuesday’s Senior Night game with the Tigers before finishing off the season Thursday in Dayton.

“Hopefully right off the bat of the game, just bringing that momentum and be ready for Yamhill tomorrow.  In the locker room, it all starts there,”   Baumgartner said.

Photos By Jeremy McDonald