Girls basketball defeats Hawthorne in first home game

On Jan. 13, the girl's basketball team defeated Hawthorne High School 52-11. With the help of new head coach Douglas Kim, the team was able to avenge last year’s loss and rewrite history.Prior to the game, the players were all working very hard for their first home game to showcase their improvement in the past year.“The night before at practice we worked really hard on running our plays properly, and it helped a lot,” Diana Marcial (’18) said.“We’ve been in a little bit of a slump because we’ve been down a few players so I was kind of concerned about where we were going to get our scoring but we actually did a really good job. I thought our defense did a really good job,” Kim said.The practice the night before and their determination showed as they played and led led the first half 39-4.“I thought we did very well, we held out the zero points [for a pretty long time] so whenever you can hold a team to zero points you’re doing pretty well,” Kim said.Once the second half started, the girls started to get tired. Only scoring one point, the team ultimately ended the third quarter 40-8.“I wasn’t really happy at parts of the third quarter. I thought we had a moment where we could’ve played a better defense,” Kim said.During the last quarter, Samo retaliated as if they were motivated by the marching band’s excellent performance. Samo came back with determination and fierceness that they had started the game with, and fought harder for the ball. “We planned to press them, and just play clean, calm basketball. We did so, we were all really proud of each other,” Carmen Donate (’18) said.Although there were some difficulties, the girl’s basketball team overcame them and are now looking forward for their next game against Beverly Hills High School on Jan. 18.