Wapakoneta 33 Kalida 27
By Phil McLEAN
Wapakoneta Daily News Staff Writer

KALIDA — If fans were looking for an exciting win Saturday when the Wapakoneta Redskins played Kalida in non-league girls basketball they might have been disappointed.
It wasn’t a very pretty win, but “we’ll take it,” Wapakoneta Redskins varsity girls basketball coach Rusty Allen.
After trailing the Wildcats 20-16 at halftime, Wapakoneta came back to hand Kalida a 33-27 defeat.
“These games over break are difficult because it just gets us out of our routine,” Allen said. “Obviously our routine is a little messed up and that affected our play a little bit.”
Christy Steinke opened the scoring with a 2-point field goal 30 seconds into the first period. It didn’t take long for Kalida to respond, Trisha Horstman converted both ends of a 2-shoot foul opportunity to tie the score at 2. Horstman gave the Wildcats a lead they would hold throughout the first half, although the Redskin’s Heidi Schlegel knotted the score at 6, 3 minutes into the period.
“We talked about that at half time,” Allen said. “As poorly as we were playing we were only down four.”
Kalida held a 9-8 lead after the first 8 minutes and won the second period 11-8.
“We weren’t shooting the ball real well and defensively we weren’t real intense,” the coach said.
Defensively, Wapakoneta took control in the second half, hold Kalida to only seven points. “They put a lid on the basket, I guess,” Wildcat coach Karl Lammers said. “We had some good looks at it.”
Lammers said he didn’t believe that it anything specific that Wapakoneta did in the second half.
“I just think that we mentally lost confidence,” Lammers said.
Three times in the third period Wapakoneta tied the game, finally taking the lead, for what turned out to be the last time, on a 2-shot foul by Schlegel. Emily Steveley gave the Redskins a 4-point lead half way through the fourth period. Kalida didn’t score until the 1:16 mark of the period when Gina Verhoff, the only senior on the Kalida drained a 3-pointer to cut the Wapakoneta to one.
The Redskins went on a 5-point unanswered run over the last minute of the game, to preserve the victory.
The loss drops the Wildcats to 6-3. Kalida was led by Margaret vonderEmbse who tallied a team high 9 points.
Schlegel led the Redskins with 10 points, the only player in double figures Saturday.
The Kalida junior varsity overcame an 8-7 Wapakoneta and took a 29-27 win in the opener. Karmyn Schneider paced the 3-4 Redskins with 13 points. The talented sophomore then followed that performance up by singing the national anthem at the Wapakoneta boys basketball game Saturday night.
Wapakoneta, now 6-1 on the season, will be back on the road Tuesday, when the Redskins travel to Maria Stein to meet the Marion Local Flyers, a 4-3 team who lost to Anna 66-63 on Saturday.

Boxscore
Wapak 8   8 10  7 -33
Kalida  9 11   4  3 -27
Scoring:
Wapakoneta: Bryan 0-0-0, Steveley 2-0-4, Schneider 2-1-5, Steinke 2-1-5, Golden 1-2-5, Helmstetter 2-04, Lowry 0-0-0, Schlegel 3-4-10. Totals 12-8-33.
Kalida: Heitmeyer 0-0-0, Hamburg 0-0-0, Horstman 2-2-6, Turnwald 2-0-5, Verhoff 1-0-3, vonderEmbse 4-0-9, Kaufman 1-0-2, Kortokrax 0-0-0, Fuerst 1-0-2. Totals 11-2-27.
Three-point Goals: Wapakoneta 1 (Golden); Kalida 3 (Turnwald, Verhoff, vonderEmbse).
Fouled out: None
Technical fouls: None
JV Score: Kalida 29-27.

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