Scouts Sweep Through Thanksgiving Tournament, Win Cougar Classic For The Second Year In A Row

AJ Shaw, Sports Editor
November 27, 2019

VERNON HILLS — Domination.

That is one way you could say the performance of the Lake Forest Scouts girls varsity basketball team was in this year’s Cougar Classic: domination.

With their 50-12 victory over the Antioch Sequoits on Tuesday, the Lake Forest Scouts won the Cougar Classic for the second straight season and now have gone 5-0 to begin a season for the second straight year.

In this tournament, the Scouts held their opponents to just 24 points per game. If this was football, we would be calling them an above-average defense, but in basketball that is just flat out unheard of.

“We have been running this defensive system for about a year now,” said senior captain Halle Douglass when discussing the team’s dominant defense. “We have all gotten used to it, so it makes it easy for us to teach our younger girls how to run it.”

Of course, this tournament wasn’t just about the solid play of the team’s dominant performance, but the play of some individual players, mainly freshman Bella Ranallo and junior Lilly Trkla.

Ranallo dropped 12 and 5 points in her first two Varsity games and looks to be a key piece off the bench for the Scouts going forward.

As for Lilly Trkla, she had a tremendous tournament, grabbing rebounds at will, playing solid defense and showing her ability to score down-low, as she dropped 17 points in the Scouts victory over Sycamore on November 25.

“A lot of it has come from me running the floor more than I have in the past,” said Trkla. “My teammates are so unselfish and they are always making the extra pass.”

With the conference schedule coming up, this start is going to be huge for the Scouts confidence and the excitement around this team is starting to return to where it was around the playoffs last season.

“Going forward we have to realize that the schedule is only going to get harder,” said junior captain Molly Fisher. “Just because we won the Sectional last year does not mean we cannot put in hard work every day. We have to work 10 times as harder in every practice.”

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Vernon Hills tournament champs! scouts finish 5-0

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