POTTSVILLE — A year ago, the Schuylkill Haven Hurricanes’ trophy case was absent a Schuylkill League girls basketball championship. That is no longer the case for the Hurricanes, who claimed their second straight Schuylkill League title on Friday night.
In front of a jam-packed Martz Hall full of buzz and excitement for Friday’s pair of Schuylkill League championships, the Division I champion Hurricanes went punch-for-punch with the Division II champions, Our Lady of Lourdes Regional Red Raiders. The Hurricanes ultimately nabbed their second straight Schuylkill League title in come-from-behind fashion, winning 38-31.
While the Hurricanes may have been the defending champions, it was the Red Raiders who many thought would take home the title.
“To win one is amazing, and then to come back and do it again,” Hurricanes’ star McKenna Runkle said, trying to explain her emotions following the title win. “Everyone doubted us because we won last year, and everyone thought it was surprising, and then we came back and did it again. So, we proved everyone wrong, and it was amazing.”
SEE ALL THE GAME PHOTOS: Schuylkill Haven girls basketball wins Schuylkill League championship
While most would have a hard time believing that a defending championship team would be doubted, it’s largely true regarding Friday night’s Schuylkill League championship.
Before Friday, Lourdes had won 16 straight games and entered the contest with a 22-1 record, including a perfect 14-0 mark in league play. The Red Raiders were a juggernaut throughout their win streak, boasting an average margin of victory of over 30 points. The closest any Schuylkill League opponent had come to Lourdes during that stretch was 17 points. The Red Raiders did not just dominate opponents; they dismantled them.
Add to that the Red Raiders had tremendous size in the post with Hannah Lokitis and Sophia Karlovich that very few other teams could match, and it’s easy to see why the Red Raiders had so much success throughout the season and are likely to continue to do so going forward.
But on Friday, there would be no dismantling. There would be no domination for Lourdes. Instead, it was Schuylkill Haven, a team built on speed, grit, and tenacity, that would win the night and the Schuylkill League title.
The Red Raiders will remain the favorite to claim a District 4 title, and a deep state playoff run at the Class A level could certainly be in their future. But their journey this season will not include a Schuylkill League crown. That story belongs to the Hurricanes.
On Friday night, both teams came out with the energy expected in a championship game. The two sides traded shot after shot over the opening minutes but struggled to find the bottom of the net.
Hannah Lokitis, the star forward for Lourdes, opened the scoring 1:42 into the game with a pair of free throws. Ava Terefencko got the Hurricanes on the board 13 seconds later with a free throw of her own before Braelynn Strenkoski hit a jumper to give Schuylkill Haven an early 3-2 lead.
Lourdes didn’t trail for long, immediately embarking on a 9-0 run that flipped the game into an 11-3 lead for the Red Raiders. Hannah Lokitis would lead the run with four points, Sophia Karlovich contributed a pair of free throws, and Vivian Reiprish tacked on a three. For many teams, this would be the part of the game that would see the Red Raiders take over and never look back.
But for Schuylkill Haven, it was just another early punch.
“Yeah, they’ve been able to take punches before, and they did a good job handling it,” Schuylkill Haven coach Tony Sanders said about his team’s response to the early deficit. “I thought we battled hard… that was the difference in the game.”
The Hurricanes stopped the bleeding before the end of the first quarter and were able to narrow the deficit to six at 13-7 thanks to baskets from Audrey Hutchinson and McKenna Runkle.
The second quarter would be a low-scoring one, an advantageous position for the Hurricanes. As they did in the first quarter, Lourdes landed the first punch as Reiprish hit her second three-pointer of the opening half to regrow the lead to 14-7.
But after the opening three, the Hurricanes outscored the Red Raiders 7-2 over the remainder of the quarter, with Audrey Hutchinson scoring six points and McKenna Runkle adding a basket in the final minute. While it wasn’t a quarter that saw Schuylkill Haven take over the game, it allowed the Hurricanes to continue chipping away at Lourdes.
For the Hurricanes, it was also the start of what would be a masterful defense against what has been a lights-out offense for Lourdes this season, averaging over 52 points per game.
Schuylkill Haven in the game forced over 20 Lourdes turnovers, a highly uncharacteristic night for a fundamentally sound team, while also keeping the Red Raiders to just 13 second-half points.
Much of the success for Schuylkill Haven defensively came down to limiting Lokitis to just six points. While Lokitis was still able to impact the game on the boards and defensively with numerous blocks, the Hurricanes never allowed the 6-foot-1 center to find her groove offensively.
“We were preaching that all week in practice,” Sanders said about not allowing Lokitis to get clean looks at the rim. “I thought McKenna (Runkle) did a terrific job on her again.
But the Hurricanes’ defensive gameplan went far beyond just trying to limit Lokitis at the rim.
“We had to pressure ball handlers, which makes them speed up a little bit and make bad passes,” he explained. “I thought we did a good job with that.That negated their size. If they couldn’t get the ball, we did a good job defending and denying the pass away, so we did a good job with that.
Coming out of the halftime break, Lourdes, as they did in the first two frames, struck first with Onaleigh Barnes making one of two free throw attempts in the opening 30 seconds, extending the Lourdes lead to 19-15.
An Ava Terefencko jumper cut the Hurricanes’ deficit to 19-17, but the basket would quickly be answered by Kylla Sandri with a basket of her own, growing the lead back to 21-17.
But the Hurricanes, as they were all night, continued to be resilient. Audrey Hutchinson and Ava Terefencko scored back-to-back in a matter of seconds to give Schuylkill Haven a 22-21 lead. Lourdes reclaimed it shortly afterward on a Sandri three-pointer, while Karlovich regrew the lead to 26-22, but no matter how hard they tried, the Red Raiders couldn’t keep the Hurricanes down.
Facing a 26-22 deficit at the media timeout in the third quarter, the Hurricanes came out of the timeout with six straight points thanks to a McKenna Runkle free throw and five points from Kylie Siket. After the short 6-0 run, Schuylkill Haven found themselves ahead 28-26 before Sandri once again tied the game with a basket with 25 seconds remaining in the third quarter.
The fourth and final frame was the Hurricanes’ best defensive stretch of the night, limiting the Red Raiders to just three points.
Lourdes wouldn’t find the bottom of the net until the under-two-minute mark, when Onaleigh Barnes hit a three-pointer to cut the Hurricanes’ lead to 34-31. That would, however, be as close as Lourdes would get in the closing minutes.
The Hurricanes’ championship was then sealed by none other than Audrey Hutchinson. The senior made a pair of free throws with just 23 seconds remaining before putting an exclamation point on the win with a steal and a fast-break basket to secure the 38-31 victory. Hutchinson finished the night with a game-high 14 points.
Hutchinson in the Hurricanes’ pair of Schuylkill League playoff games was phenomenal, totaling 33 points across the two games, leading the Hurricanes in both games, including 19 points against Mahanoy Area in the semifinals.
“She’s a special player,” Sanders said of Hutchinson. “She’s been doing it for four years for us, and I can’t give her enough credit. She’s a workhorse for us.”
For Hutchinson, the win means even more for her than for some of her teammates. As the Hurricanes’ lone senior, this was her last Schuylkill League game and final chance to play in the Schuylkill League tournament.
“I love the game of basketball, and I love these girls more than life itself,” she said. “I couldn’t have asked for any other way to leave the Schuylkill League behind.”
But while she says goodbye to the Schuylkill League, Hutchinson and the Hurricanes still have more to play for.
“Our job’s not finished,” she said. “We’ve got more games to play.”