By DAVE WOODALL
Slidell sports writer
SLIDELL — The 1st Annual Lady Panther Invitational Tournament opened last Friday with seven teams participating in the event.
Included are the host Northshore Panther’s, Pearl River, Chalmette, Haynes Academy, Slidell, Jewel Sumner and John Ehret.
PR vs. Chalmette
In first day action, the Pearl River Lady Rebels (4-10) opened against the Chalmette Lady Owls (11-2) who handed the Rebels a lopsided 53-15 loss.
Things started bad for the Rebels as Chalmette’s zone defense proved to be impossible for them to penetrate while the Owls offense was hitting on all cylinders shutting out the Rebels 15-0 in the first quarter.
That domination continued in the second quarter as the half ended 23-2 for the Owls.
Pearl River was 1-of-9 from the field with Savannah Walker hitting the only bucket of the half.
Daja Bunch led the Owls with 10 first half points,
Bunch also had a huge second half hitting another 15 points to lead all scorers with 25.
Sierra Jackson also had a good game for the Owls scoring 12.
Walker led the Rebels with 13 points.
Slidell vs. Haynes
The second game of the afternoon pitted the Slidell Lady Tigers against the Haynes Academy Yellow Jackets.
Thanks to some good ball movement and some fine defense, the Tigers dispatched the Yellow Jackets 53-40.
Slidell (3-10) led throughout the game and opened up an 11-3 first quarter lead and extended it to 30-15 at the half.
Jewell Thompson came up big in the first half hitting nine points all coming on three-point shots. Angel Nikolas also had a good effort with seven points.
Haley Gonzales tried to keep it close with 10, first-half points for Haynes Academy (9-7).
Haynes cut into the Slidell lead as Tiger coach Josh St. Cyr emptied his bench to give all of his team a chance to play but it wasn’t enough as the Tiger starters came back into the game to take care of business to close out the win.
Nikolas led all scorers with 15 followed by Lauren West and Thornton who each had 14 with Kayla Cureaux contributing six.
Gonzales and Precocial Parlow each had 12 points for Haynes Academy.
Tiger coach St. Cyr was pleased with the win but mentioned a letdown in the second half.
“We played an unselfish game today and spread the ball around. I’ll take the win but I wasn’t happy about our play in the second half. We got too comfortable with our lead and didn’t have much fight in us. Other than that, we had a good week of practice and came into today’s game really focused in the first half.”
NS vs. Pearl River
Northshore (8-8) ended the night for the local teams with a convincing 41-21 over Pearl River (4-11).
Neither team shot well in the first half with the Panthers leading 10-5 at the end of the first quarter and 16-7 at the half.
Sydney Houlemard had 10 of Northshore’s 16 points in the half with Cayla Klepfer adding four.
The Panther defense held the Rebels to only two points in the third quarter while scoring 16 of their own to pull away.
Pearl River’s Savannah Walker had a big night scoring 14 points while hitting three, three-pointers.
Houlemard had her usual good shooting night draining 21 points and six rebounds, followed by Klepfer’s 10 points and five steals.
“Right now we need to get wins no matter how they come,” Panther coach Bill Gallagher said.
“We will continue to make mistakes because we are young. I’m excited about how we played on defense today. We mixed it up and everyone did a good job executing the defensive pressure.”
NS vs. Haynes
In the second day of the tournament, Northshore lost to Haynes Academy 42-29.
The Yellow Jackets outscored the Panthers 14-5 in the first quarter and 11-6 in the second frame to take a 25-11 halftime lead from which Northshore would not recover.
Houlemard led the Panthers with 19 points and seven steals. Gianna Casteneda scored six and Klepfer added four.
For Haynes Academy, Parlow led the way with 10 points followed by Belina Denfasha contributed eight.
In the second game, John Ehret handled Pearl River easily winning 54-31.
Slidell vs. Sumner
The third game of the day saw Slidell fall to the Jewel Sumner Cowgirls 59-32.
Slidell got behind right out of the box as the Cowgirls opened the game with a full court press that the Lady Tigers were not prepared for.
“They pressed us early and we weren’t ready for it,” Tiger coach Josh St. Cyr said. “We ran a zone to stop their inside game but they started to hit from outside. We missed a bunch of shots and had some poor shot selections.”
Nikolas led the Tigers with 17 and Cureaux hit eight in the loss.
Chalmette handled Haynes Academy with ease 53-15 in the fourth contest of the day.
(See INVITE, pg. 8D)
Slidell vs. Ehret
In game five, Slidell came back with a vengeance after losing earlier in the day with a dominating 73-52 win over John Ehret.
Ehret never led in the game but kept it close in the first half with ties at 9-9, 11-11 and behind 19-7 at the end of the first quarter.
But starting in the second quarter, the Tigers started to pull away thanks to some good ball movement and good execution of their offense which resulted in a 37-29 lead at the half.
Slidell opened the second half going on a 10-0 run to go up 47-29 and went on to post a 61-34 margin at the end of three.
Despite being outscored 18-12 by Ehret in the fourth quarter, the Tigers held on for their convincing win.
“The girls played well especially on defense,” St. Cyr said. “We need games like this for our confidence going back into regular season play this week.”
The sixth and final game of the day saw Jewel Sumner hold on to win 40-36 against Chalmette.