CAK girls win classic finale; boys lose in OT
KNOXVILLE — Led by their junior point guard, Christian Academy of Knoxville’s girls started quick ly during their final game of a two-day classis, held at Webb School of Knoxville Saturday, Dec. 16.
Building a 15-point third-quarter lead before squashing a Franklin Road Academy rally, the Lady Warriors improved to 10-3 after a 58-50 win. It was only the second loss for the Lady Panthers of Nashville.
Claire Brock, junior point guard, “really got us going in the first half. We fed off her energy.” CAK head coach Caitlin Hollifield said. Brock scored a game-high 21 points.
Meanwhile, A 64-63 overtime loss to Franklin Road Academy’s boys wasn’t due to a lack of effort from Shane Wells’ Christian Academy of Knoxville Warriors.
“It’s tough to swallow when you play that hard but you can’t put the ball in the hole. … It’s tough for them to swallow and it’s tough for me to take, too,” coach Wells said about the Warriors’ cold shooting touch Saturday.
Also playing in the classic, Christian Academy fell to 6-6. (More on the boys game later in this story).
Another leader for the CAK girls, “Amber Heatherly, a senior (guard), hit a couple of big threes back-to-back to give us a little bit more of a gap in the second half,” Hollifield said about her 16-point performance.
“Kennedy Smith (junior forward), she doesn’t score a whole lot of points but she averages at least 10 rebounds a game. Ellie Fussell (junior guard), she battled today, she played tough and she hit a couple of big shots late,” the coach added.
“We executed our plays very well,” Brock said. “Our defense, we got some big stops toward the end that really propelled us toward that win.
“I’m really proud of how we played together today,” she added.
“I thought we shared the ball really well,” Heatherly said.
Looking at the overall season, she added, “I think its going well. We have very good chemistry together. … We play for each other.”
Hannah Carroll, CAK sophomore forward, scored 10.
The Lady Warriors bounced back from a 37-25 loss to Baylor School of Chattanooga Friday evening, Dec. 15.
Wells said about his CAK boys, “This team has played with a lot of energy all year.”
Despite losing 10 players, including all five starters, off of last year’s team, “This group has been in every game except yesterday [a 71-49 loss to Baylor Dec. 15 in the classic] and up at Science Hill,” Wells said. “They’ve won some games they shouldn’t have because of their energy.”
Wells said he was proud of how Turner Heitzman, senior post who scored a team-high 18 points, “just played naturally and attacked the basket. I’m really proud of him for that.
“I thought they all played pretty well,” the coach added.
“It was a really tough game, they were really physical,” said Heitzman, who injured his left wrist during the game. “We were, too. It was just a really tiring game.
“Both teams fought really hard,” he added. “We just fell short in the end.”
John Stauffer, senior guard, and Luke Etherton, sophomore guard, each scored 12 points for the Warriors. Jason Ozment added eight while Chase Bristow had five points and Jackson Morris scored four. Dayne Davis and Mitchell Deeson each had two.
