Wendel leads Tribe to title

WAPAKONETA, Ohio — The Panthers were worried about the damage Kendra Siefring and Kelsey Will could do inside.
They were concerned about slowing down Jocelyn Kaiser.
Stopping sophomore Kiah Wendel was not a part of their defensive game plan. And she made them pay.
Wendel scored five points during a 7-0 run that gave the Indians the lead for good, and she added a steal and layup later to finish a 9-0 flurry. Ten of her team-high 11 points came in the first half, and sophomore Carley Stone, who also scored 11, came up big in the fourth quarter.
The underclassmen paced the Fort Recovery High School girls basketball team as it ended a three-year sectional drought with a 51-32 win Saturday over Parkway to capture the Division III title at Wapakoneta.
“She’s been a spark for us almost all year,” said FRHS coach Brian Patch of Wendel, who had more than doubled her season scoring average by the intermission.
“She plays a lot of minutes as a bench player. She gives us a lot of energy. She hit a big three for us to get us going.”
That big 3-pointer broke an 8-8 tie and represented the final points of the first period. Stone and Wendel then combined for the first four points of the second.
A three-point play from Haley Hawk pulled Parkway (7-16) back within four, but the Indians responded with nine straight points. The last of those came when Wendel knocked the ball away from Ashley Clark near mid-court and went the distance for a layup.
“On our scouting report we didn’t really account for her,” said Parkway coach Chris Weirrick. “I was worried about the two big girls. I was worried about Kaiser, because that girl flat out hustles all the time.
“(Wendel) hit shots. They were open shots. She did a good job, and she did what she needed to do to win.”
Wendel, who split a pair of free throws to open the second half, entered the game averaging 4.6 points per game — sixth-most on the team.
But as much as her offense mattered, her focus when she entered the game was on the other end of the floor.
“On the bench our coaches said we needed someone to go in with a spark,” said Wendel. “And I went in and gave it my all with my energy on defense.”
The Indians (19-4) extended the lead to as many as 19 points before Parkway came fighting back sparked by back-to-back 3-pointers from Bailey Bates (12 points) to pull within 35-28 early in the fourth quarter. But the rally ended there as FRHS responded with a 12-2 run.
Stone assisted on the first of those points by Siefring and then handled the next eight on her own, hitting on a series of pull-up jumpers from about 15 feet. By the time the Panthers hit another field goal they were down 15 with just over two minutes to play.
The 11 points apiece from the underclassman led a balanced scoring effort, as Siefring and Kaiser each followed with nine points and Will added eight. Grace Thien and Will each grabbed eight rebounds, and Thien also dished out five assists.
The win sends Fort Recovery to the district semifinal for the first time since 2012, when it let a 17-point first-half lead slip away in a 58-52 loss to Upper Scioto Valley. The Indians will play Liberty-Benton, which topped Tinora 70-45 in Saturday’s other title game at Wapakoneta, at 8 p.m. Thursday at Elida.
Patch believes his team will have to look drastically different than it did against Parkway in order to have a chance to beat the Eagles (16-8).
“The positive, we won,” he said. “The negative is we didn’t do anything we worked on all week long to try to execute offensively or defensively …
“Lack of focus was the biggest part — lane violations, girls taking the ball out of bounds that never take the ball out of bounds, running sets and we’re not in the right spots. …
“If we want to continue to play … we’ve got to be a heck of a lot better than we were tonight.”