Two games into the regular season, the injury bug is starting to bite the Fayetteville Lady Rockets.
The Lady Rockets began the season at East Clinton with a pair of games this past weekend. On Friday, November 18, Fayetteville fell to Waynesville 66-21.
One night later, the Lady Rockets dropped a 35-31 contest to Clinton-Massie.
Missed layups and free-throws did in the Lady Rockets against the Lady Falcons. The team struggled at the free-throw line, which is unusual according to head coach Victoria Rummel.
“We were 10 of 17 from the line, which is uncharacteristic of us,” Rummel said. “We’ve been doing really well in practice, shot after shot went in. We get down to the wire and can win a ballgame and we struggle.”
The teams traded blows for the first three quarters. Clinton-Massie led 9-5 after one period but Fayetteville cut that deficit to 15-13 at halftime. The Lady Rockets held an 8-6 advantage in the third quarter but were outscored 14-10 in the final period.
Faith Rosselot led Fayetteville with 12 points. Scarlett Crawford tallied six and Ava Baker tallied four with Victoria Thompson scoring three and Ellie Attinger adding three. Ryley Kleemeyer added two and Lilly Carlier scored one.
“We were right there,” Rummel said. “They execute well. They’re X’s and O’s kind of girls, they want to know where you want them. ‘Put me here, run the play and I’ll do it.’ That’ll come with experience, they get more comfortable going out on their own. When you have six freshman and this is only the second varsity game they’ve been a part of…we weren’t really expecting a lot of them to get playing time, but when you lose one [player] after the other, it’s been hard.”
Fayetteville was shorthanded over the weekend. Two of the team’s three seniors, Cassidy Feldhaus and Anne Murphy, have already missed time due to injuries.
“We were already struggling with numbers,” Rummel said. “We had 13, lost Anne to a knee injury. We’re hoping for her sake it’s not anything worse than bruising and some swelling you can work through. Then Cassidy went down in the first three minutes of our [first] game. We’re down to one senior, one junior and the rest are sophomores and freshemen. The girls are going to have to learn, trial by fire. They’re good kids, they work hard. They just lack experience.”
The 0-2 Lady Rockets are scheduled to return to the court on Monday, November 28 in Manchester for a Southern Hills Athletic Conference contest.