Carmel ought to be a hot ticket
Owen Perz will be a Carmel Catholic girls basketball fan, if he already isn't, but he'll be busy when the Corsairs tip off against Fenwick at 7 p.m. Wednesday.
“His bedtime is at 7,” Carmel coach Kelly Perz said of her 2-year-old.
A bunch of Sarah McHugh's classmates might attend the Corsairs' home game against Fenwick.
Might.
“They say they're coming,” said McHugh, a starting junior forward. “But then they don't.”
They should.
OK, so it's not option football on turf on a Friday night, with the home team dominating and fooling both officials and opposing defenses by camouflaging the football in their brown jerseys. Seven wins may not be a big deal for the football team, which has come to expect at least that many, but it is a big deal when the girls basketball has that many W's in its first three weeks.
Carmel improved to 7-1 Monday night by holding off host Lakes 63-56 in a nonconference game.
Afterward, Carmel's players sat and leaned up against Lakes' bleachers wearing long faces. The players and their first-year coach no doubt weren't too happy with squandering a 14-point lead in the third quarter and committing 24 turnovers on the night.
McHugh's 19 points, 7 rebounds and 4 steals, and 12 points apiece from Beth Scudder and Erin Quinn, helped Carmel overcome Lakes' balanced attack. Terese McMahon had 13 points and 11 rebounds for Lakes, which also got 12 points each from Evan Morris and Ashlee Cunningham, and 10 from sub Amanda Smith.
“They play hard and they're well-coached,” Perz said of coach Pete Schneider's Eagles. “We didn't do some of the fundamental things that we have to do every game to win ballgames. We didn't box out. We didn't take care of the ball. So (the game) was a lot closer than I would have liked it to be. But a W is a W.”
There will be more W's for the Corsairs, but now the schedule gets tough. After the Fenwick visit, another formidable East Suburban Catholic Conference foe, Bishop McNamara, comes to Mundelein for a 2:30 p.m. game Saturday.
Carmel, which opened the season by going 4-1 in Mundelein's Thanksgiving tournament, played its first and only home game last Thursday and knocked off Resurrection 56-48.
“That was a good win for us,” Perz said.
All victories are good for a team that came up just shy of posting a winning season last winter and hasn't been dominant since 2003-2005, when Carmel captured 53 wins over two years with players like Jenny Eckhart and Caitlin Krombach (Perz's kid sister).
“I think there's another level that we haven't seen yet that we're capable of,” Perz said. “We've been very consistently playing well. Our one little misstep was our one loss (44-33 to Rolling Meadows).”
The Corsairs suffered more than a couple of tough losses last winter. This season, like Monday night, they're finding ways to win.
“I think the difference this year is just maturity,” Perz said. “We've got a lot of experienced juniors and seniors, and I think that's finally coming into play at the end of games and in crucial situations.”
“We just have a lot of energy and our team chemistry is pretty good,” said McHugh, who played varsity last season along with Scudder, Quinn, Jackie Meier, Kaitlyn Lynch, Madeline Felipez, Jacque Hoeft and Tylee Resetich. “We just seem to be getting it done.”
Somebody might want to tell that to their schoolmates. Fenwick is a perennial state power, and the Corsairs could use a little support Wednesday.
“We'll try to get people there,” Perz said. “I think the more we win, the more we'll get some fans.”
McHugh understands. She and her teammates aren't going to tackle anyone in the hallways.
What, do you think they're football players?
“They really don't like girls sports (at Carmel),” McHugh said with a laugh. “But we're trying, we're trying. It's a football school. We're trying to get some fans. It's a work in progress.”
And on the court, the Corsairs are progressing.
jaguilar@dailyherald.com