Beaufort Academy girls’ ‘revenge tour’ ends with SCISA Class A state championship
The pathway to Beaufort Academy’s 48-27 SCISA 1A championship victory Saturday over Dorchester Academy was paved with milestones of its recent past.
The Eagles fell in the semifinals of the SCISA tournament the last two years at the Sumter County Civic Center before reaching the final game with a victory over Patrick Henry on Thursday.
“The beauty in that is that Patrick Henry beat us two years ago and Dorchester Academy beat us last year,” head coach Lilian Aldred said. “Both teams by five points. We’ve gotten to call this the revenge tour.”
The revenge part of Saturday’s game took a little while to develop.
Both teams made defensive stops and went on a methodical shot-for-shot pace in the first half that ended with Beaufort Academy up 18-16.
“We got a little nervous in the first half, for sure,” senior forward Amelia Heubel said. “I started out strong, but as a team we were only up by two, which was scary. We knew we just had to do as a team what we normally do.”
The Eagles (22-3) exacted revenge swiftly in the third quarter, with Heubel leading the way with 15 points and 12 rebounds on the afternoon.
Dorchester got field goals from Lydia Hofstetter and Abby Weathers in the third quarter. For the last five minutes of the third and first four minutes of the fourth, it was all Eagles.
Beaufort Academy’s 17-0 scoring run straddling the third and fourth quarters clinched the win. Emily Ann Hiers sparked the run with a 3-pointer to get the Eagles up 24-20 on the Raiders (20-5), and for the rest of the way the action was all Beaufort Academy steals, blocks, rebounds and points.
“We did play the entire first half nervous. The pressure of the moment had gotten to us a little bit,” Aldred said. “We got into the locker room and I just said to them, ‘We have got to play our game.’”
Besides Heubel’s scoring, Beaufort Academy got 14 points from Mike’Ala Washington.
For Heubel, who scored more than 2,000 points and made more than 1,000 rebounds over her career with the Eagles, the afternoon capped a strong career with a team she loves.
“I’m proud of our accomplishments as a team,” she said.
D: Lydia Hofstetter 13, A. Weathers 6, V. Weathers 3, Varn 3, Guess 2. B: Amelia Heubel 15, Mike’Ala Washington 14, Heyward 8, E. Hiers 6, M. Hiers 5.