Valley Central girls 2nd in summer league

Posted 8/1/19

It was a successful season for the Valley Central girls’ basketball team as several of the players competed in the Most Precious Blood Summer Basketball League.

They played in the high …

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Valley Central girls 2nd in summer league

Posted

It was a successful season for the Valley Central girls’ basketball team as several of the players competed in the Most Precious Blood Summer Basketball League.

They played in the high school division with three other teams – Goshen, Cornwall and Warwick – and finished second, losing in the championship game, 32-25, last Wednesday night.

As is the case with summer leagues, games are not played around vacations and other summer activities, so coach Randy Axtell doesn’t have everyone at his disposal like he would during the varsity winter season.

He said it’s not very often that he has his top five or seven players on the court at the same time in the summer. Against Warwick on Wednesday, Axtell said he was missing two primary starters.

But winning is not the primary purpose of the summer league.

“It’s mostly to make sure the girls are getting some reps in,” Axtell said.

Valley Central opened the evening with a 44-38 win in the semifinals with a win over Goshen.

Overall, the Vikings finished the season, 9-3 and were the regular season champions over the first five weeks of the season.

The only two regular season games they lost were to Warwick, 41-23, on June 26, and 40-26 on July 10.

Valley Central defeated Warwick on July 17.

Most Precious Blood isn’t the only league Valley Central plays in, but it is the most competitive. The Vikings also play at a league in Beacon, where other teams sometimes struggle to have enough players to fill the court.

“We keep them playing and build a little bit of teamship,” Axtell said. “There is less structure.”

There’s also an open gym two days per week at Valley Central High School, which could have anywhere from two to 10 girls showing up.

There the Vikings mostly work on drills, but they’ll do more if there are more players.

“If we have enough of our core group, we might run through some offensive reps,” Axtell said.

What these programs do is provide the girls with a little bit of structure and opportunity for the girls to play because Axtell said girls are less likely than boys to play pick-up basketball.

“I think it’s important just to keep their skills up,” he said.

They’ll need those skills because Axtell said the Vikings are in a good spot coming off a season where the Vikings were the third seed in the Section IX Class AA title and reached the semifinals.

They expect to return eight of their nine players.

“The girls have been working pretty hard overall,” Axtell said. “Overall (a section title) will certainly be our goal.”