Wauconda wins — and hopes impact players are OK
Wauconda's girls basketball team keeps making noise, but this was not the sound anyone in Richmond-Burton's field house wanted to hear.
“It was a scary sound,” Wauconda junior center Katie Rossetti said.
Late in the opening quarter Saturday, with Wauconda leading 10-3 en route to a 41-16 win over Richmond-Burton on Day 2 of the Northern Illinois Holiday Classic, Wauconda applied pressure as the Rockets dribbled the ball up the court. Bulldogs junior Hayley Redmann went for a steal near the half-court line. Brooke Legnaioli of R-B hustled to save the ball for her team.
Both players zigged in the same direction. Neither zagged, until contact.
“I knew it was happening before it even happened,” Wauconda coach Jaime Dennis said after her Bulldogs (10-1) improved to 3-0 in the tournament with their second win of the day. “You could just see both of them going (for the ball and running toward each other), and they were both at the same height.”
Redmann and Legnaioli banged foreheads, violently. The girls crashed to the court near the bleachers, both wincing in pain as they rolled onto their backs.
“It's probably an athlete's worst nightmare — anything with the head,” Rossetti said. “I hope both of them are OK.”
The game was delayed 20 minutes, as both Redmann and Legnaioli lay on the court while being treated. Both players eventually wobbled out of the field house with assistance, ice on foreheads.
“She'll be OK,” Dennis said of Redmann, her returning 5-foot-10 junior. “She has a concussion. She has all the classic symptoms ... headache, ringing in the ears. But she was still sharp.”
While both teams may have been shaken by seeing a teammate injured, Wauconda kept its focus. The Bulldogs led 12-3 after a quarter and went into halftime up 30-9.
“It's always tough, because the girls worry and they start focusing on that,” Dennis said. “But they know (Redmann) is OK. She's going to be fine.”
Rossetti scored all of her game-high 12 points in the first half. Corrina Vaughan netted 6 of her 8 points before halftime. Eleven players scored for the Bulldogs, who advance to the championship bracket at McHenry and will play McHenry at 12:30 p.m. Monday.
“There are a lot of different people that will step up,” Dennis said of her team. “We have our solid core of Corrina and Katie, but obviously we need a lot of other people.”
Rossetti, Vaughan, Redmann and Marissa Miller are the Bulldogs' only returning players.
“Having only four people coming back, we didn't know what to expect,” Rossetti said. “But we've worked so hard. I'm so proud of everybody. It feels awesome.”
Wauconda 44, Woodstock North 40: At Richmond-Burton, Corrina Vaughan scored a season-high 20 points, and the Bulldogs rallied from a 36-29 deficit after three quarters to win their first of two games on the day.
Katie Rossetti added 14 points for Wauconda, which outscored the Thunder 15-4 in the fourth.