The  strong crowd that turned out for a girls/boys double-header at John Nett gymnasium, unfortunately, the didn’t see the home teams earn victories.

The Rochester Lourdes high school  basketball teams took a 45 minute trip east to play their long time rivals at Cotter Saturday.

The varsity events started off with a five o’clock girls varsity basketball game, followed by the boys game at 7:15.

The Cotter girls came into the game 6-6 overall (3-3 in conference) and searching for an upset victory against the always competitive Lourdes Eagles, who held a respectable record of 7-4.

Cotter coach Pat Bowlin knew the importance of the game and what the girls must do to defeat Lourdes, “Leading up to the game I thought our best chance was to utilize our full court press to create a lot of turnovers and to make it a transition game. I felt Lourdes had the best chance to win if the game was played more in the half court.”

A long hard fought contest ended with a score of 59-52 in favor of Lourdes.

“We did force 27 turnovers, led by Gabby Bowlin’s 7 steals,” stated Bowlin, “Unfortunately their 6’0 center Megan Hobday had 7 blocks and we really struggled in the half court against their 3-2 zone. “

“Well, we played well but in the end we couldn’t come up with the win,”   stated Cotter’s starting power forward Mikaela Nelton.  “We need to continue to do the little things more aggressively and play hard the entire game.”

Cotters senior center Kaylin Zukowski agreed with Nelton, “It was a tough game we were battling in, but in the end it wasn’t enough.”

Gabby Bowlin tallied 13 points and 7 steals, while Zukowski added 11 points and five rebounds, and senior point guard Kelly Vaselaar added 10 points and 4 steals.

After the tough loss for the girls, the boys took the court looking to upset the talented Lourdes squad.

The boys team holds a disappointing record of 2-11 (1-7 in conference), while the Lourdes boys sport a record of 7-5.

“Our goal is to play as hard as we can play. It would be great to have a competitive game anytime we are playing Lourdes,” said Cotter coach David Jewison prior up to the game, “It’s always a great atmosphere.”

Assistant coach Seth Haun had this to say, “At this point in the season, the biggest thing is to treat this like any other game.  Trying to make it out to be more than a non-conference game can increase unnecessary stress and expectations.  That being said, rivalry games do provide more emotion and intensity.  The game itself will create the extra hype; we do not need to do anything to increase this.”

The game started off in the wrong way for the Cotter boys, as they were only able to score 13 points to Lourdes 33.  “The first half was pretty ugly and put us in a really bad spot,” retorted Jacob Modjeski on the teams performance in the first half.

Unfortunately, the sun did not come up at all for the boys team for the second half, and they fell to Lourdes 58-39.

“The second half we started playing better, our shots started falling, and we played with them well.  We outscored them the second half, but the first half really killed us,” said Modjeski, a senior guard.

Josh Forst was Cotters leading performer with 11 points and 9 rebounds, and Jonah Spiten added 8 points with 5 assists.