HURRICANE– This weekend, the Greenbrier East Spartans and Lady Spartans hit the road for overnight stays for two away games at different locations.
The ladies nested in Chapmanville to take on Huntington St. Joe and Chapmanville on Friday, Dec. 13 and 14 respectively, and the boys battled Hurricane and St. Albans at Hurricane on those same days.
The boys season opener against the Redskins in the Will Washburn Classic didn’t quite go as planned. The game was knotted at 10-all, but a dominating 19-0 run by Hurricane helped them jump out to a 38-17 halftime lead behind the dynamic duo of Shalik Hampton (13 pts first half) and Carson O’Dell (15 pts first half).
East’s Reed McCraw came out of the locker room hot and scored the Spartans first six points of the quarter. A few possessions later, he then hit a 3-pointer, but the Redskins always had an answer each time Greenbrier East looked poised to make any semblance of a run. Much like the first half, Hampton was too much underneath and O’Dell kept hitting from downtown as Hurricane won by a final score of 82-50. Hampton finished with 26 for the Redskins and O’Dell had 24.
McCraw led East with nine points, all in that stretch in the third quarter.
WVDN player of the game: Reed McCraw
On Saturday, things went a little better for East after a 53-44 win over the Red Dragons from St. Albans.
A 13-0 run for East gave them a nice lead at halftime, but St. Albans, led by Zay Hall, kept battling back. However, some clutch buckets down the stretch from Brody Hamric and Nathan Dixon, and with Sam Hawver hitting the boards and controlling the paint, the Spartans wrapped up a nice first win of their 2024-25 campaign.
Hamric led the Spartans (1-1) with 15 points and Dixon got 12. Hawver, unofficially, had around 15 rebounds and posed a big problem for St. Albans offense inside the paint and disrupted what they wanted to do on that part of the floor.
Hall led St. Albans with 13 points.
East will play at Pikeview this Tuesday, Dec. 17.
WVDN player of the game: Sam Hawver
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CHAPMANVILLE- The Lady Spartans had a couple of impressive victories to keep their undefeated streak alive.
Against Huntington St. Joe, the Spartans were having trouble stopping their sharpshooter Mariah Johnson which led to a tied game at halftime 29-29. But in the second half, coach Jim Justice put Sandy Banton, who started in place of the injured Hannah Fuller, on Johnson for the rest of the night. Johnson did not score a single point in that second half. Banton chased her down everywhere she went and shut her down. In the meantime, the Spartan offense capitalized mainly with Kennedy Stewart who finished with a game-high 20 points, five rebounds and six assists as East outscored their opponents 32-20 after intermission for a 61-49 win.
Ava Workman added 10 points and seven rebounds for the Spartans. Mackenna McClure scored 10.
Johnson finished with 14 for Huntington St. Joe, all in the first half.
WVDN player of the game: Kennedy Stewart
Game two was a lot like the first.
After leading 34-27 at halftime, and struggling to contain Chapmanville’s star Daizi Farley, who scored 16 points in the second quarter, East went to Banton again in the third quarter and tasked her with shutting down Farley.
And she answered, again.
Farley didn’t score again. In fact, Brooke Christian was the only player to score a point for Chapmanville in the entire second half while the Greenbrier East offense was closing things out yet again and took a 56-42 victory.
Stewart finished with 20 points for the second straight game and Workman added 15. Banton had eight.
The Lady Spartans (4-0) will be back in action this Tuesday at home to host Pikeview.
WVDN player of the game: Sandy Banton
