Girls basketball: Lake Park stymies Schaumburg for second straight win

With the girls basketball season commencing this week, it gets itself a unique edge over their boys counterparts on the hardwood. That being, as a result of its mid-November start, there’s a two-week preview of their squads before league play begins after Thanksgiving.

That fact was not lost on Schaumburg's second-year mentor Kaitlyn Aylward.

"Counting the first two weeks of practice (before) we're able to put something (together) and kind of work through what we're going to run through," Aylward said.

"It's nice to be able to play some games after those two weeks of practice."

After a season-opening win over Bartlett Tuesday evening, Aylward's Saxons entertained a Lake Park unit in Thursday's opening game of session two of the 36th Schaumburg Thanksgiving Tournament.

The Lancers also were coming off a game one win of their own against Riverside-Brookfield.

Unfortunately for the tourney hosts they found the visitors to be not very nice guests as the Lancers used an 8-0 start and never looked back. Lake Park left Schaumburg in the dust en route to 43-16 win to move its mark to 2-0 on the young season.

"I thought we did a nice job playing hard," said Lake Park coach Bobby Reibel, who brought back his entire roster from last year’s senior-less team.

"I think it's now playing hard with discipline and that's what we keep talking about. Executing a little bit more with playing hard (plus) I love the energy defensively. It's just cleaning up the things which everyone else is trying to do."

The Lancers got that opening surge thanks to 4 of senior forward Allie Gogola's 11 points as they built a commanding 10-2 lead after one.

Then, Gogola's senior starting mate Maggie Frank took over with 5 of her game-high 18 points that gave them an 18-8 advantage at the half.

Frank, who ended up with four 3-pointers, credits having confidence in her shooting ability as a key to success.

"I think it's like when you're missing (shots) you just have to believe that the next one is going in and you just got to put it up," Frank said.

For both Frank and Gogola along with the rest of their teammates they brought the defensive energy that impressed their coach. It held the home team to only 2-10 (20%) from the floor in half number one and just 5-17 (34 %) for the entire evening.

In addition, Lake Park forced the Saxons into more turnovers (26) than field-goal attempts.

Senior reserve guard Emma Grossman's 8 points led the way for Schaumburg (1-1) who faces Riverside-Brookfield in Saturday afternoon's last contest.

The Lancers will play fellow DuKane Conference member Wheaton Warrenville South in the game proceeding it.

"This is our second year here," Reibel said.

"Riverside-Brookfield is new to us. We get to see some teams that we don't see again and we go from there."