By Brian Dessart
"We knew we were going to have match-up problems because of their size," said East Rockaway coach Karin Leary. "We lost to a very good team."
East Rockaway, which was outscored 17-4 in the first quarter, had a bit of a scare when starter Meredith Levison went down with an ankle injury. Levison returned to action two minutes into the third quarter, played three minutes, and then came out again. Her ankle was put in a cast the following day, and she will spend four weeks in a fiberglass immobilizer.
East Rockaway, which was down 36-13 at the half, knew that something had to be done to stop the scoring of the Lady Falcons. "We went from man-to-man to zone play," said Leary. "We started to get a little more confident in the third."
It was obvious that the Rocks gained more confidence, matching South Seneca's third-quarter scoring with 13 points. But the gap stood at 49-26 at the end of the quarter, East Rockaway continued to have trouble playing a catch-up game, scoring only 5 fourth-quarter points.
Even when defeat seemed certain, however, the Lady Rocks never stopped trying. "We never quit," said Leary. "We played all the way to the end. This was the seniors' last game. They played to the buzzer."
Following the conclusion of the game, East Rockaway's Melissa Gelb, who finished with 9 points, was named All-Tournament, while Amanda Schenck received the sportsmanship award.
A day earlier, in the semifinal game, East Rockaway took charge, beating Berne-Knox-Westerlo 55-39. "Every game, there's someone different who steps up," said Levison, who finished with 13 points. "Today it was me." Levison was referring to her 12-point fourth quarter, which included two 3-point buckets that helped give East Rockaway a 14-point edge in the final minutes of the contest at Hudson Valley Community College.
At the beginning stages of the third quarter, however, when Levison took a hard fall and was on the floor for two minutes before returning to the bench, it seemed as if she was out of the game. But nothing was going to stop her effort to make history, and she returned to action two minutes later.
"I got kind of mad," said Levison. "Once I got back in and hit my first shot, my momentum was going."
After a left-side jumper by East Rockaway's Caitlin Tamashiro with 2:16 remaining in the first quarter to tie the score at 7, Berne-Knox-Westerlo held the Rocks scoreless in the final minutes of the quarter, ending it with a 9-7 lead on foul shots by Theresa Rupeka and Jesse Fernandez.
"It seemed like there was a garbage lid covering the basket in the first quarter," said East Rock assistant coach Tim O'Hagan. "But we just kept plugging away and plugging away."
In the second quarter, the Lady Bulldogs went on a 6-point scoring run, led by Sarah Domermuth's 4 points, to put East Rockaway down 16-13 at the midway mark. But the Lady Rocks had some fire of their own, taking off on a 10-0 scoring run in the second half of the quarter. After two 2-pointers by Amanda Schenck, who finished with 10 points and 9 rebounds, and baskets by Sarah D'Archangelis, Brittany Fuller and Melissa Gelb, the Rocks grabbed a 23-16 lead.
But the Lady Bulldogs found a way to close the gap to 4 points, as Kim Sikule, who finished with 12 points and 12 rebounds, nailed a 3-pointer with 16 seconds left in the half.
"In the second quarter we stretched the lead and kept coming," said Tamashiro. "We shut them down."
One East Rockaway fan summed up the excitement in the final minutes of the game: "Twenty-six and one!" he yelled from the stands, referring to Berne-Knox-Westerlo's record, as East Rockaway was about to hand the Lady Bulldogs their first defeat this season. "Twenty-six and one."
