By Mark Carpenter

People’s Defender

A rough season came to an end last Saturday afternoon for first-year head coach Jordan Johnson and the Manchester Lady Greyhounds as they opened postseason play with a Division IV sectional final contest on the court at Northwest High School, facing the #4 seeded Symmes Valley Lady Vikings.

With only four regular season wins, the Lady Hounds were destined to face a tough sectional match up and that turned out to be the case as the Lady Vikings had no issues disposing of the Manchester blue and gold, taking the sectional crown with a convincing 71-24 victory.

The LadyHounds could manage just one score from the field in Saturday’s first quarter, that from freshman Destiny Alexander, as they fell into a 17-4 hole after eight minutes. The Manchester girls did double their first quarter point total int he second, getting 8 this time with aid of three-pointers from Alexander and Raegan Wikoff, But they had no answer for the Symmes Valley offense as the Lady Vikes stormed into the halftime break with a 36-12 advantage.

The third period got even worse for the Lady Hounds as their defense gave up 21 more points, while their offense only produced four, another triple from Wikoff and a free throw by senior Shawna Bryant. Symmes Valley now led 57-16, putting the running clock rule into effect and in the final quarter, the Lady Hounds got three-pointers from Wikoff and Maddie Napier as they saw their season come to a rushing end.

In the season-ending loss, junior guard Raegan Wikoff led the Manchester scoring with 13 points with Destiny Alexander adding 7.

Manchester finished at 4-19 for the year, but fielded a young squad that featured just one senior on the roster, Shawna Bryant.