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Sports briefs: Steamboat boys take away wins

Joel Reichenberger

— A late night and an early morning still turned into a win for the Steamboat Springs High School boys basketball team.

After getting to bed late after a win against Roaring Fork on Friday, Steamboat had to rise at 6:30 a.m. for an 8:30 a.m. start with Basalt.

Despite some slow legs and heavy eyelids, Steamboat came away with a 55-39 win, pushing its record to 2-0.



“We came out flat,” Steam­boat coach Luke DeWolfe said.

After playing relatively well with a makeshift lineup Friday, Steamboat struggled to find any sort of rhythm in the first three quarters.



The game was tied in the fourth quarter before the Sailors and junior point guard Isiah Forsyth opened the game up.

Forsyth hit several big shots at the end of the third quarter, propelling Steamboat’s run in the fourth quarter.

“He got that momentum going into the fourth quarter,” DeWolfe said about Forsyth, who scored a game-high 21 points.

With the Steamboat Shootout set for Thursday, Friday and Saturday, DeWolfe said the team would focus on its defense and integrating its young forwards more into the offense.

The Sailors will get help, however, as seniors Jack Spady and Dylan Pivarnik return to the team after finishing the football season.

A bright spot for the Sailors in the early going has been the play of Forsyth and fellow junior guard Charles Wood, who had a game-high 28 points in Friday’s win against Roaring Fork.

The two dominated the tournament, showing a level of maturity that will be integral in Steamboat’s success this season.

“It’s good to see the guys perform without the presence of some of the pieces we’re missing,” DeWolfe said. “That’s a real positive for us.”

Sailors girls basketball team improves to 2-0

Knowing what he has this season, Steamboat Springs High School girls basketball coach John Ameen classified Saturday’s 51-42 win against Basalt under all the categories.

“It was a lot of good and a lot of bad and a lot of ugly,” Ameen said.

But in the early goings of the season, one thing is clear. This Steamboat team has found a way to win, no matter the type of game it plays.

On Saturday, the Sailors used a big second quarter to run away with the win.

Junior Hannah Moore again had a big game, leading Steamboat with 19 points. Steamboat led, 28-16, at halftime before letting up a little in the second half.

“That second quarter, I got a really good feel,” Ameen said. “The offense was fit, and the defense was intense. We went into halftime feeling better about where we were. But we could never really seal the coffin.”

Against an athletic Basalt team, Steamboat still was able to hold on in the second half.

The Sailors now prepare for the Steamboat Shootout where they’ll see tougher competition.

Steamboat opens at 8:15 p.m. Thursday against Longmont-based Skyline.

Ameen said the focus this week in practice will be refining sets and gearing up his team for a tough tournament.

Regardless, the fourth-year coach said he was pleased with the opening tournament.

“We were fighting through some injuries, so that was good,” he said. “We just need to clean up some stuff offensively. It’s that sharpness. It was kind of your typical opening weekend tournament.”

Rams basketball sweeps weekend tourney games

The Soroco girls basketball team picked up a pair of wins Friday and Saturday in the West Grand tournament.

The Rams surged in the fourth quarter of a Friday game against Clear Creek to win, 49-41. On Saturday, they easily handled Eagle Valley’s junior varsity squad, winning 61-14.

“We played really well,” coach David Bruner said.

Soroco trailed, 28-27, entering the fourth quarter against Clear Creek, but put in a decisive 21 points to pull away.

The team was led by sophomore guard Madison George, who scored 13 points, and junior Corey Snyder, who had 11. Junior Ceanna Rossi grabbed eight rebounds.

“We were able to keep our transition going, and we got some easy baskets,” Bruner said. “We were in better condition than they were, and our up-tempo style wore them down finally.”

The team shot 18 of 66 in the game, a mark Bruner wasn’t thrilled with until he found out the team had played with a boys ball throughout.

When it had a girls ball Saturday against Eagle Valley, the shooting improved a great deal.

Snyder scored 15, Rossi and Shelby Miles scored 12, and George scored 10. George also had seven assists, six rebounds and three steals.

The Rams return to the court Friday to host Hayden.

Soroco boys basketball splits weekend games

The Soroco boys basketball team struggled to a 59-47 loss Friday against Clear Creek, but rebounded Saturday with a 62-46 win against Eagle Valley junior varsity.

“Friday night it was a tight game, but they did a real good job trapping our guards, and that got us out of our game,” Soroco coach Sam McLeod said.

Cody Miles led the team with 20 points, and Alex Estes scored 14.

Against Eagle Valley, Estes poured in 20 and Miles scored 16. The surprise of the game, however, came from Leif Carlson, a 6-foot-5-inch junior who is in the midst of his first basketball season. He scored 18 points and had four blocked shots.

“He’s raw, but it’s starting to click,” McLeod said. “That’s really going to change what we look like as a team.”

The boys return to the court Tuesday at Steamboat Springs against the junior varsity team and then play again Saturday at home against Vail Christian.


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