Fayetteville’s Lilee Coffman drives to the basket against Ripley.
Ripley’s Riley Finn lines up a shot for the Lady Jays.
Ripley’s lone senior, Reggie Taylor, hugs her sister, Grace (12), after checking out of the game on Senior Night.
A little history was made on the hardwood at Ripley-Union-Lewis-Huntington High School on Monday, February 7.
Fayetteville junior Anne Murphy scored her 1,000th career point in the contest, which the Lady Rockets would go on to win 56-41.
“She’s one of those kids that you just hope to have on your team at one point in your life,” Fayetteville head coach Victoria Rummel said. “She’s a leader on the court, she leads by example. There are times where I’ll be attending to things on the bench and I never worry about what’s going on because I know she’s going to handle it.”
Murphy entered the game 21 points shy of the milestone mark. She reached the 1,000-point plateau in the fourth period on an offensive rebound and a tough basket in the paint. Murphy finished the game with 24 points.
“It’s exciting,” Murphy said. “There’s a lot of pressure off now…we played a faster after I got it.”
Murphy is the third athlete from her family to accomplish the feat as a Lady Rocket. Samantha Murphy scored her 1,000th career point in a game against Ripley on February 4, 2016.
Cecilia Murphy scored her 1,000th career point exactly three years before Anne in a non-conference win over Felicity.
“It feels nice to be [with] them,” Anne Murphy said. “I’ve been working for it for a while.”
Rummel had high praise for her junior guard.
“She’s going to make sure she understands the game better than anybody,” Rummel said. “She’s at every shoot around, she never misses everything. She’s always wanting extra time in the gym, and she’s only a junior. You get another year with her, and we’re happy about that. She challenges me, there’s no one who challenges me more than that kid.”
The basket came as a relief for Anne Murphy and, it would appear, the rest of the Fayetteville team. There was a noticeable difference on the court after the shot went in.
“I feel like we were very focused on this one point,” Rummel said. “It was kind of looming over us and you could tell a difference in the team. We started playing normally once we broke that and moved on.”
Fayetteville only led by three points at halftime, 28-25. They pushed that margin to 43-33 after three quarters as things took a turn against the host Lady Jays.
“We just fell apart,” head coach Chris Coleman said. “We got ourselves back in the game after a slow start. Lot of intensity. We came out and I don’t know what happened. We had some issues, kids complaining to each other about things an when that started that’s when it all fell down.”
Ripley fell behind early but got back into it by addressing deficiencies in two key areas of their game.
“We rebounded better,” Coleman said. “Started taking care of the ball.”
Riley Finn led the team with 16 points and 10 rebounds. Brooke Sims added 10 points. Grace Taylor scored five with Ellaina Hutchinson adding four and Kenlee Finn scoring three.
Reggie Taylor, the team’s lone senior, saw her first action of the season in the game for the Lady Jays. She had missed the team’s first 20 games and is unlikely to play in the postseason, according to Coleman.
“She’s meant as much as any kid I’ve ever coached,” Coleman said. “I’ve coached 25 years, boys and girls, she’s the most hard-nosed kid I’ve ever had.S She got her surgeon’s OK to play a few minutes at a time, however she felt, and I don’t think she’ll play anymore after this. She means the world to me, she’ll truly be missed.”
Olivia Crawford scored 17 points for Fayetteville. Faith Rosselot added five. Cassidy Feldhaus and Lilee Coffman scored four points each. Ava Wells and Victoria Thompson scored one point apiece.
