The first game in the girls’ basketball conference was at State College on Dec. 12, 2022. 

“The conference goes by size of school. Hollidaysburg could be in it, but they would be in a different Mid Penn. We’re in the Commonwealth which is the 6A. There’s another one that’s for the smaller schools, but we decided to not play in it. Everyone has their own choices of what conference they play in,” head coach Chris Fleegle said.

The athletes worked on their skills through two hour and fifteen minute practices, five days a week. During these practices they would do skill based drills and watch films. 

“You have to break out the film, try to limit their success and build off of all the successes that we have so scouting is very important,” Fleegle said.

The varsity team lost with a score of 60 to 48. 

“We are going to be better, we have a young team,” Fleegle said.

The starting line up for Varsity was Zaelighn Nguyen-Moore, Melania Eyer, Lanie Wilt, Jaiden Krull and Harley McGirk. 

“It feels good to be starting for varsity. I’m there because of an injury, but I’m doing it because I want our seniors to have a win for the end of the season and to win districts for them, so that’s what I think about,” freshman Nguyen-Moore said.

Altoona won the jump ball and scored the first basket of the game. A jump ball is when the referee throws the basketball between two players, one from each team, and the players try to hit the ball to their teammates. 

“When we play at home, I feel like our confidence is a lot higher because of our fans in our student section hyping us up. Rather than going away because we have the opposing teams student section cheering against us, which kind of brings us down a little bit,” McGirk said 

By halftime the score was 32 to 23, and Altoona was losing. 

“Starting the second half I felt like we didn’t go into it as strongly as we wanted to and we were kind of frustrated that we were down. I think that we just continued with the frustration and we didn’t keep our hopes high and we just didn’t reach the goals that we wanted to go into the second half which is the reason why we couldn’t get the lead,” McGirk said

Regardless of the losing score during half-time, the athletes continued following the coaches orders to attempt to overcome the losing score.

“We are still trying to figure some stuff out, but we’ve got a good group of girls who will get out there and work,” Fleegle said.

The game resulted in the Lady Lions’ record becoming 0-1 for their conference. 

“I feel like we will work harder in practice. Honestly everyone just needs to keep their heads up and have positive energy because it’s only one loss,” Nguyen-Moore said.

The Lady Lions basketball team plays home on Friday, Dec. 16. They play against Central Dauphin East.