OE welcomed New Lothrop to town tonight for the two community’s 2nd annual Coaches vs Cancer game, along with an “Orange Out” in honor of OE student Justin Cole who has been battling cancer. His aunt Courtney Bates also set up and ran “Be the Match” to help register people for potential bone marrow matches throughout both games.

“We went into tonight’s game knowing it was a 50-50 game for us in conference play. We have great respect for Jim and his program at New Lothrop - and know they have one of the better players in the area in Brooke Wenzlick that we had to keep track of throughout the night,” said Head Coach Ryan Cunningham.

After an up and down 1st quarter that saw OE down 6-10, the Marauders buckled down on the defensive end by cleaning up some of their mistakes, and started to execute on the offensive end. Barton gave a presence inside as usual - scoring 10 points, while Caitlyn Walter had a huge 4th quarter knocking down shots at big moments where momentum could have changed.  Walter finished with a team high 15 points while Longoria added 6 points, Madison Cunningham and Braylon Byrnes 4 points each, Tristin Ziola 3 points, and Kalista Bancroft and Allison Reppenhagen 2 points each.  Walter and Longoria both grabbed 5 rebounds as well.

“Kiah Longoria may not show up a ton on the stat line in this one tonight, but she had herself one heck of a night defensively and deserves a ton of credit for slowing Wenzlick down throughout the game,” added Assistant Coach Brandon Belill. “It was a lot of pressure to put on a freshman, but we felt she was up to the task, and she rose to the occasion.”

“This is a huge win for our program,” Cunningham said. “The girls are starting to buy into what we’ve been preaching all year about taking care of the small things and letting the chips fall where they may.”

With this win OE improves to 8-3 (5-2 MMAC) going into Tuesday’s home battle against league leader Byron @ 7PM.