Hot start fuels James Wood girls in romp over Clarke County

By JOSH DORSEY Special to The Star

BERRYVILLE — James Wood opened with a 3-pointer from Amanda Christian on Monday night against Clarke County and used that to jumpstart a wire-to-wire 55-29 victory.

All night the Colonels (8-3) were delivering crisp passes and finishing their shots in one of their most consistent and complete efforts of the season.

“I thought we did amazing tonight,” said James Wood coach Krista Crites. “Offensively, defensively, moving the ball, talking and rebounding as a team, everything was clicking tonight. In the past couple weeks we have been striving to work together as a team. We are very good individually but we’ve been working more on a team effort and tonight we did a great job on all sides of the ball.

“The one thing we’ve struggled with this year and what we’ve worked on in practice is our passing. We are young and the maturity level is getting better as the season goes on.”

The Colonels’ offense was unstoppable early against Eagles (5-7). Christian made two first quarter 3-pointers and Makayla Firebaugh also scored six more points as James Wood took a 20-4 lead after the opening period.

“I think it’s important to get in a rhythm early on,” Firebaugh said. “That way you set a goal for the team to keep going harder and faster. It scares the team to get them away from you and that way you can keep pushing. When you do things individually they can keep you down but when you play as a team and get everyone involved it makes things much easier.”

Firebaugh, a freshman, had a game-high 14 points that were all tallied before the start of the fourth quarter when James Wood had the game well in hand.

“Makayla is tough,” Crites said. “To only be 14-years-old and to come into and offense and coach she can do it all. She does a great job. Her teammates have embraced her and she takes that role as a freshman very well. She doesn’t play like a freshman. She’s been playing this game for a long time and when she’s decides to play basketball she’s very hard to stop and is very vital to us.”

Christian’s early 3-pointers put the pressure on the Eagles defense that would get caught in between defending the perimeter or down low.

“Everyone has their own thing that they can contribute to the team and anything that I can contribute is something I would love to do,” Christian said. “For me it’s all about focusing early and in warm-ups. Making sure I’m taking my time and looking at the rim. It’s big because once I’m clicking the post can click. I can get it down to them when the defense is coming out on me. When one of us is thriving the other can thrive.”

“That’s what Amanda Christian does,” Crites said. “She hits three’s for us. It’s a team effort every night and if we play as a team we are hard to stop.”

Clarke County got four quick points from Heather See and a 3-pointer from Jade Payton to open up the second quarter on a 7-2 run and cut the Eagles deficit to 22-11, but that was as close as the Eagles got for the rest of the night.

The Eagles did outscore the Colonels 11-8 in the second period by more than doubling their first half output and getting four points from Heather See. After the break, James Wood came out with the same intensity on both sides of the court as they had in the first quarter. The Colonels opened with a 7-0 run and extended the lead to 35-15. This time, James Wood shut down any thoughts of a Clarke County comeback by outscoring the Eagles 21-6 to take a 49-21 lead into the final quarter.

In the first and third quarters combined, the Colonels outscored the Eagles by a whopping 41-10 margin.

“Coming out strong to start a game and after a half is another thing we’ve really been working on and that’s another thing I have to attribute to my kids,” Crites said. “They’ve taken it upon themselves to improve that and over the past couple of games they’ve had a really strong first and third quarter. I was really glad to see that they did that tonight.”

Amber Wooldridge and Hannah Arnold tallied 10 points each. Christian netted nine and Hannah Burke added eight. Arnold grabbed 11 rebounds, while Christian secured eight boards.

“All around everyone played well,” Christian said. “We didn’t just rely on one type of scoring or one person to score. We are all rebounding, passing, shooting and scoring. Sometimes we like to get complacent but this time we kept cutting and getting open. We worked well together.”

See paced the Eagles with nine points.