This basketball season was a season of growing for a young Catasauqua team. The team played the season without a senior on the team and leaned on six junior players for leadership. After that, the roster had nine sophomores and a freshman, all still adjusting to the rigors of a full varsity season.

The Lady Rough Riders ran into the playoff bound Northwestern Lehigh Tigers recently and fell behind early but never ceased to battle before Northwestern won the game 41-13. Sophia Becker – one of the sophomores on the team – came out firing and scored all five of Catasauqua’s first quarter points. The Northwestern Lehigh defense adjusted and was able to shut her down for the rest of the game apart from two fourth quarter points that put her at seven on the night. Jordan Soltis hit a three-pointer late in the game to get into the scoring column and fellow sophomores Delaney Troxell finished with two points and Lailey Polanco finished with one.

“Turnovers had been an issue for us earlier in the season, but we had cut down on them in the last few games. In the games that we won, not turning the ball over has been a big part of the success in those games,” said coach Mark Seremula, whose team turned the ball over 28 times in the loss to the Lady Tigers. “Northwestern is aggressive, and they are a very good team and forced a lot of those turnovers tonight, so you have to give some of the credit to how they played on defense.”

One of the young Northwestern players, freshman Cara Thomas, finished with a game-high 13 points. Northwestern juniors Maci Fisher had nine points and Paige Sevrain finished with eight.

The team showed some resiliency when they came back the following night and beat Notre Dame East Stroudsburg 40-24. In that win, Polanco finished with 12 points in the game, while Becker and Kaylee Weidaw both contributed eight points for Catty. On Monday night, the Rough Riders finished their season with another win when they downed Moravian Academy 37-29. Polanco put on another impressive display, hitting three three-pointers on her way to scoring 18 points in the game.

The two-game win streak at the end of the season might not sound like much, but it gave the Lady Roughies an 8-14 overall record and put them at 6-12 in the Colonial League. The win totals are more eye opening than they may initially seem because they came from a young team that went winless just one season ago.

“We are at least close to being the youngest team in the Colonial League,” said Seremula. “We have improved not just over this season but from last year to this year, we have grown a lot. Overall, we have improved both offensively and defensively over last year. For the season, we are out-rebounding our opponents, which I am extremely proud of and have gotten better on turnovers, although we didn’t show that tonight.”

Last season, Seremula relied heavily on getting playing time for the seniors that he had on the team, and it came at the expense of getting experience for younger players. This season, some of those same players were thrown into the starting lineup or high-profile roles off the bench, but the overall result was better than last season. Troxell was the only returning starter from last year’s team and she showed her value with eight rebounds against Northwestern Lehigh.

Getting wins in their final two games put the perfect ending onto a difficult season for Seremula and his players.

“If we can get to eight wins, that would be a successful year for us,” predicted Seremula. “A win over Moravian Academy would be a wonderful way to end the year and give us something to really build on coming into next season when we will have a more experienced team on the court.”