Hannah Schuringa records double-double in victory.
By Mike Miazga
Correspondent
The Timothy Christian girls basketball team continued its winning ways with a recent 42-18 non-conference win against Westmont.
Hannah Schuringa led the way for the Trojans with a double-double with 13 points and 11 rebounds. Jordyn Strube, Sureya Alex, Lauren Gehrke and Olivia Schruinga each had six points.
The win was Timothy’s fourth in a row and fifth during a recent seven-game stretch.
“We had a stretch where we had seven games in 10 days,” Timothy coach Michele Strube said. “That was a little much, but it’s done and we did well. It’s been a lot of fun. Winning five of the last seven is great. We’re very excited.”
Strube said while the string of wins is nice, one recent concern has been slow starts.
“We get off to some slow starts,” she said. “We had a meeting instead of practice and did devotions and ordered Jimmy John’s and we talked for an hour and wanted to figure out how the girls come out ready to play. Sometimes it takes two quarters to start playing and against good teams you can’t do that. It’s taken us awhile to figure it out. It’s like the girls lack confidence. They can do it because we have very nice players. We have to figure out how to do it from the beginning. Against good teams, you can’t come out ready to play in the third quarter.”
On the positive side, Strube said different players contributing in the scorebook and on defense have made a huge difference.
“I’m going to go with our defense being a big strength,” she said. “For one, you have to stop the other team. I think our defense helps us. Usually so many teams want to score, score, score. We do a good job of stopping teams and then we score. We do some different defenses. We’ve tried a little box-and-one, some full-court man. We’re not very good with man. That’s something we had to do against Westmont.”
Strube praised the recent play of 6-1 junior Heidi Westra. “She doesn’t score a lot, but she leads the team in assists and blocks and deflections,” the coach said. “She’s such a key for the defense. You won’t see her name a ton for scoring, but we couldn’t do a lot without her.”
In other recent games, Timothy defeated Guerin Prep behind Hannah Schuringa’s 13 points and 13 rebounds. “We are getting different scorers each night,” said Strube. “In this game, Hannah had 13 and then we had girls with eight, nine, seven and seven points.”
The Trojans then put up 71 points in a win against Elmwood Park. “For us to score 71 points, that is a good team effort between rebounds, steals and deflections,” said Strube. “We came out very strong in the third quarter.”
Strube had 18 points, while Schuringa had 12 points. “Again, we had girls with 11, 10, nine and seven points,” said Michele Strube. “We came out very strong in the third. We stayed strong together. We’re having different players step up every night. It’s been fun.”
Strube also praised the team’s senior contingent (Olivia Schuringa and Emily DeBoer) and lauded the play of freshmen Alex and Hannah Schuringa.
“Sureya has played well,” she said. “With Jordyn being injured and then sick, Sureya has played a lot of point guard. Besides being a good ball-handler, she can score. She had 13 points on 5-for-9 shooting, that’s a nice percentage. Hannah was a pretty big standout against Westmont. She was our leading rebounder coming off the bench. We’re a pretty young team with two seniors and seven underclassmen.”
Timothy will play the Lisle tournament over the holidays. The Trojans open the tournament against Addison Trail.
