By John D'Onofrio
BUFFALO — There’s something to be said about good sportsmanship and keeping your cool.
The Lockport Lady Lions demonstrated both of these characteristics on Saturday, showing typical poise and equal determination in beating Williamsville North, 47-40, to claim their second straight Section VI Class AA girls basketball championship.
Next up for the blue and gold is the Far West Regional at 4 p.m. Saturday at Gates Chili High School in Rochester. Lockport will play the winner of Monday night’s Section V AA title game between Fairport and Mercy.
Back at the noisy Erie Community College Burt Flickinger Center, LHS junior Caroline Randall netted a game-high 15 points and senior Lea Sobieraski added 14 points and 13 rebounds, but it was superb play off the bench and costly technical fouls late in the game by the Lady Spartans that ultimately decided the winner.
“It was very physical out there. I think they were getting more and more aggravated with themselves,” said Lady Lions sophomore Marisa Guyton.
Guyton, who scored six points and added five rebounds and two blocks, was referring to three straight technical fouls committed by the Lady Spartans in the game’s final two minutes.
Lockport, perennial winners of the Niagara Frontier League Sportsmanship Award, went to the charity stripe and calmly iced an otherwise exciting and well-played, though extremely physical contest in which both teams found themselves in foul trouble early.
Lockport struck first, jumping out to an 8-0 first-quarter lead on a Guyton three-pointer and two inside buckets from the athletic Sobieraski.
The green and gold finally got on the scoreboard with a minute to go in the stanza, but Guyton drilled another outside jumper and LHS led 10-2 after one.
Led by the strong inside play of senior Emily Helwig (11 points, four rebounds), Will North battled back in the second to cut the LHS lead to two, 12-10.
By then, three Lockport players were in foul trouble, including sophomore center Emma Sobieraski, who was whistled for her third violation and Lockport head coach Bill Shaw called a time-out to regroup.
“That definitely was not the type of game we wanted to be in,” Shaw said.
“Our offensive execution was not sharp enough, but defensively we stuck with it and I thought we controlled the boards.”
A clutch trey from Patti Burdick, a baseline jumper from Lea Sobieraski and a steal and layup from senior point guard Renee Schwartz put Lockport back ahead by nine, 19-10.
“I was a little nervous going in, but who wouldn’t be?” said Burdick, who contributed big minutes with fellow sophomore Casey Oliphant while the Lady Lions weathered the foul trouble storm. “Patti and Casey did a nice job for us when we needed them to step in and give us some much needed minutes,” Shaw said.
Late buckets by sophomore Nikki Attea and crafty junior Corrin Genovese (13 points, five steals) cut the LHS lead to 19-14 at the half.
Schwartz drained a three-pointer to open the third quarter, then the teams traded baskets and fouls the rest of the way as LHS maintained a four- to eight-point lead.
Randall’s biggest bucket of the game came when she dribbled end to end and banked one in at the buzzer to give Lockport a 32-26 lead heading into the fourth quarter.
Two jumpers by Randall and another by Lea Sobieraski pushed the LHS lead to double digits for the first time to open the fourth, but by then, Randall, Emma Sobieraski and Schwartz all picked up their fourth fouls and things got tense.
A steal and layup by Genovese cut the Lockport lead to nine, 40-31, but that’s as close as the Lady Spartans would come.
Seconds later, Will North players started losing control, pushing and shoving Lockport players without the ball, but referees were on top of things and three straight technical fouls were called, helping Lockport put Will North away for good.
“They’re a great team and played hard all the time. We’ve been known to have a slow start and we had our ups and downs, but we fought with them for every inch,” said Lady Spartans coach Clare Crowley.
