FORKS — Judging a game by its front and back cover, the Forks girls basketball team had nice 1A Evergreen League outing against Rainier.
The story on the pages inside, though, is a Spartan tragedy, filled with turnovers and a struggling offense, as Rainier picked up a 57-37 road win over Forks.
The Spartans battled the Mountaineers evenly in the first quarter, but trailed by as many as 29 points before finishing the game on a 12-3 run.
“Well, I liked the last four minutes when we played hard,” Forks coach Al Scheibner said after Friday’s game.
“That’s the big thing. Against teams like that, you’ve got to play hard for 32 minutes. I don’t think we really did that. We played a pretty good first quarter, but we just have the tendency to . . . lose our intensity.”
Courtnie Paul led Forks with 15 points. Most of those points game in the first half before Paul was hampered by foul trouble in the third and fourth quarters.
“She’s been averaging, I think 15 or 16 points a game. She goes to the line a lot. She does attack the basket very well,” Scheibner said of Paul.
“We just need to have a little more offense from the rest of the girls. We just can’t rely on her.”
Erin Weekes added eight points for the Spartans, Alexis Leons had six and freshman Skyler DeMatties finished with four.
Morgan Spivey paced the Mountaineers with 14 points, but it was Peyton Dungan who posed the biggest problem for Forks.
“They have that 6-foot-3 girl, Peyton [Dungan]. She’s pretty good, so I think that was part of it, too, we didn’t really know how to handle her,” Scheibner said.
Dungan finished with 13 points.
Forks (0-4 in league, 3-5 overall) goes on the road for the next three weeks, beginning with Montesano (3-0, 7-0) on Tuesday followed by Tenino (0-3, 0-4) on Friday.
“We’ve got two tough games coming up,” Scheibner said.
Rainier 57, Forks 37
Rainier 10 16 20 11— 57
Forks 8 11 5 13— 37
Individual scoring
Rainier (4-7)
Brittany Schaff 2, Kera Anderson 3, Ashley Honaker 9, Aryn Thomas 8, Katelynn Ivy 3, Morgan Spivey 14, Peyton Dungan 13, Stephanie Justice 4.
Forks (3-5)
Skyler DeMatties 4, Courtnie Paul 15, Erin Weekes 8, Sabrina Collins 1, Mercedes Flores 3, Alexis Leons 6.
