Fenwick Girls Basketball Survives A Battle

Nothing came easy for the Fenwick girls basketball team in the Class 4A Hoffman Estates regional final.

In the end, though, the most important thing to the Friars is they kept their season alive by turning back the host 50-43 in a fierce battle Friday night.

“The whole idea of this is you want to survive and advance to the next round,” Fenwick coach Dave Power said. “That’s what we got accomplished tonight.”

A slow start, foul trouble and a marvelous performance by Hoffman Estates senior forward Jada Stotts threatened to topple the top-seeded Friars (26-4).

They clung to a 43-41 lead as Hoffman Estates (19-9) had possession of the ball with two minutes left. But Fenwick wound up scoring the next five points to put away the game. It’s the program’s 16th regional title in a row.

“We came out kind of slow tonight,” said Fenwick senior guard Sarah Williams, who scored nine of her team-high 14 points in the second half to help hold off the upset-minded Hawks.

“We just tried to keep punching, keep punching and it worked.” Hoffman Estates pulled within 43-41 when Destinee Young split a pair of free throws after being fouled by Fenwick’s Hannah Ballard with 2:31 remaining.

Many people in the gym thought the 6-foot-1 senior center fouled out on the play, but the official scorer had it as only Ballard’s fourth foul. Apparently one of her three fouls in the first half was not properly marked.  

Power said he noticed Ballard was credited with only two fouls at the half, but wasn’t ready to admit that the Friars got away with one.

“I don’t know,” he said with a smile. “You’ll have to ask somebody else. I don’t work here, man.”

Hoffman Estates coach Mike Nocella thought Ballard should have fouled out with 2:31 remaining.

“I think she had five because at halftime they said she only had two,” he said. “We knew she had three because we were keeping track also. Even the referees were questioning it because they thought she had her fifth.”

Guess who scored the next two points in the game? Ballard made both ends of a one-and-one opportunity to put Fenwick ahead 45-41 with 1:47 left.

Williams scored next on a lay-in off Kathleen Roche’s long inbounds pass from mid-court, giving the Friars a 47-41 advantage with 48 seconds to go. Then Roche split a pair of free throws with 22 seconds left to make it 48-41.

The strong finish enabled Fenwick to overcome Stotts’ game-high 21 points. The Austin Peay volleyball recruit scored 15 of those in the second half, including nine in the fourth quarter.

“We were right in it right up to a minute to go, and we got a little bit impatient on offense there the last couple of times down,” Nocella said. “To play a team like Fenwick who’s been rated in the state all year and give ’em a game like that, I couldn’t be more proud of my kids.”

Roche finished with 11. With Ballard spending much of the game on the bench in foul trouble, Meredith Boardman came up big for the Friars, scoring nine and grabbing a team-high seven rebounds.

Fenwick made six three-pointers, the last one a 30-footer by Williams at the third-quarter buzzer that gave Fenwick a 38-31 lead. 

“That was a really good pick-me-up,” Williams said. “It was a good way to end the third quarter. We needed to come out strong in the fourth to finish it out. We definitely didn’t want this to be our last quarter of basketball.”

Fenwick advances to play Proviso East (28-2) in the York sectional semifinals at 6 p.m. Tuesday.