Catasauqua’s girls basketball team rolled to a 58-34 victory over MaST Community Charter (Philadelphia) in a District XI Class 3A pigtail game on Feb. 18 at Catasauqua.

“We watched film and knew that they played a 1-3-1 defense, so we worked on that kind of stuff in practice, and we also knew that their ball handling wasn’t great, so we were gonna be able to go man-to-man, and press up on them, and hopefully get an early lead and go from there,” said Catasauqua head coach Tara Belfield.

Catty guard Hailey Jenkins (29 points) scored on the opening tip-off, and freshman guard Sarina Sankari (13 points) added four points in the early minutes, but MaST Charter were matching the Rough Riders on layups, and Coach Belfield called a timeout.

“The thing that we preached before the game was for us to sprint down and get a bunch of easy layups; not to let them do that to us, and the next thing you know, they’re scoring basket after basket on easy layups, so a timeout needed to be called,” she said. “The first quarter, I was not happy at all. Even though we were winning, we weren’t doing the things we were supposed to be doing. The second and the third quarter were what we talked about.”

Shakala Roberts came off the bench for the Rough Riders in the second quarter and scored five straight points, including her steal that resulted in a 3-point play for the freshman guard.

Then, with 1.5 seconds left in the frame, Jenkins drained a 3-pointer on the inbound play at the buzzer.

“I saw the corner was open, so I cut to the corner and had the open shot,” said Jenkins, whose speed was more than the Panthers could handle. “In the moment, when I’m driving by everyone, my main focus is either me getting to the basket or me getting the ball to my teammates. When I’m driving, I don’t really worry about the defender.”

Jenkins and Sankari found each other in transition multiple times throughout the game.

“Personally, I try to make her proud because, as a group of freshmen, and she just had a bunch of seniors graduating, it’s kind of hard for her to carry, so we know we have to do our best, trying to get up the court to help her, so she’s not pushing the ball the whole time,” Sankari said. “I think we have to work a little harder with the upcoming games because they get harder, but this was a great win.”

MaST Charter scored five quick points between Rylie Fitzsimmons and Tierney Hamilton to start the third quarter, but Catty went on a 13-0 run, keeping the Panthers in check.

“Anything could have happened in the second half,” said Jenkins. “That team was obviously in districts for a reason, so we decided to keep our foot on the gas and don’t back off until it was a guaranteed win. It’s actually really exciting because no one really expected us to make it to leagues or districts.”

Catty’s 56-25 lead at the end of the third quarter provided opportunities for Coach Belfield to get more players in the game.

“Getting to play in a district game is kind of important. It’s big,” she said.

The Rough Riders will advance to a district quarterfinal against Notre Dame-Green Pond, scheduled for 6 p.m. on Feb. 21 at Executive Education, Allentown.

“For a young team, having the confidence that we played them once and beat them once, we know it’s not gonna be easy,” said Belfield, “but we put in the work, and we should be OK.”