After battling and falling short against to of the better teams in the area, Catasauqua’s girls’ basketball team got back on track.

The Rough Riders routed both Southern Lehigh (51-29) and Palisades (44-19) to raise their overall record to 7-3 and kept them in the top tier of the district Class 3A bracket.

Head coach Mark Seremula was relieved to see his team recover.

“We reached our goal of winning each game and getting to 7-3,” he said. “The girls played well in both games. The key for us was getting out to a fast start.”

Against Southern Lehigh, senior Sophia Becker had 16 points and 19 rebounds. Fellow senior Delaney Troxell had nine rebounds, and senior Cora Soltis had seven. Leading scorer sophomore Hailey Jenkins had a banner day with 20 points, six rebounds, four assists, and five steals.

Against Palisades, Jenkins had 18 points and Becker had 12. Senior Heaven Jenkins had eight rebounds and senior Alivia Bear had six points.

Troxell believes her team is trending in the right direction.

“Our team is looking really good at this point,” she stressed. “We are beating the teams that we need to beat and getting off the floor when we need to. Our chemistry is a huge factor in how we play. We all trust each other on the court and know that we are going to do our jobs.

“We have been gaining confidence playing the bigger teams because we are in the game with them, but we just have to make sure we are staying in the game for all 32 minutes.”

The Roughies have a busy week with Moravian Academy Tuesday, Saucon Valley Thursday and then a big showdown with Notre Dame Saturday.

Seremula knows his team still has plenty of work to do.

“We were locked defensively entirely in the first half of those games, but we had some lapses in the second half,” he said. “We can’t have that if we want to be the best team we can be.”