Eureka Springs Lady Highlanders coach Kyle Farrar was doing his best to keep things in perspective Wednesday, the day after the Lady Highlanders defeated Life Way Christian 3225 in a 2A-1 conference game in Centerton.
The Lady Warriors came into the game with a record of 1-12, after all, but Farrar said many of those games were against quality competition. And the impressive part about Eureka Springs’ victory was how the Lady Highlanders played, competition notwithstanding.
“It’s obvious,” Farrar said. “Everybody else sees, but even their words were: ‘That’s the best game that we’ve played in three years.’ I don’t know if the stars aligned or what it was, but we played really under control. We took great shots all night long. We missed a bunch of really easy ones that we could have and should have made. But we handled their press, we played really good defense. For one night, that’s as good as those kids can play so I was really happy and really pleased with them.”
Sophomore Estella Yang scored a team-high 12 points for the Lady Highlanders, all on three-pointers. Classmate Yaretsi Tapia added 11 points. Senior Brandessa Armer scored six points, while junior Madison Partee had seven rebounds and senior Lyla Morris had four assists.
“They play a really wide zone because they’re a little bit bigger,” Farrar said of the Lady Warriors. “They count on teams missing shots. They’ve played a really tough schedule and they’ve played several teams really close. So we were able to handle that.”
Eureka Springs has been shorthanded at times this season, but Farrar said the Lady Highlanders are getting back to full strength.
“That’s the fifth game, I think, we’ve played with what I would consider to be my starting lineup from the from the beginning of the year,” he said. “It’s been kind of hard to build momentum but they were all there last night for the most part and we were able to put everything together for one night.”
After another conference road game Friday night against a talented Yellville-Summit team, the Lady Highlanders will take some time off for the holidays. Farrar hopes Tuesday night’s win is a sign of good things to come.
“Having everybody there, it really helps the continuity of what we’re trying to do because we all understand the way we want to play defense,” he said. “Having everybody there helped on both sides of the floor. I don’t want to overhype because, at the end of the day, they were still 1-12. … I don’t want to just jump on board that we beat the ’96 Chicago Bulls, but for us that is as well as we’ve played maybe since I’ve been here. So I couldn’t be happier for the kids.”
