Atwater girls extend CCC winning streak to 24 games with win over Golden Valley
After winning back-to-back Central California Conference championships, the Atwater High School girls basketball program doesn’t expect to loosen its grip on the crown any time soon.
Despite a young roster, the Falcons aim to make another run at the championship this year.
So far, so good as Atwater improved to 2-0 with a 66-58 win over Golden Valley at Cougar Arena on Thursday night to improve to 6-10 overall and 2-0 in the CCC.
“We’re hoping for another title,” said sophomore Jolie Hart. “We want to go undefeated in league again.”
Hart followed her 22-point effort in Tuesday’s win against Patterson with 29 points against the Cougars.
The sustained success Atwater has enjoyed over the years has come from having players step up to replace the stars who have graduated before them. The chain started with players like Jasmine Xiong and Alondra Ponce, to Kelsey and Lexi Valencia, to Amoni Claiborne and Aliene Lopez last season.
The Falcons have kept their program going by the older players paying it forward and working with the younger players in the program.
That helps players like Hart and Karissa Hukill be ready to step into key roles as sophomores this year.
“It helped playing up on varsity as a freshman last year because I saw first-hand how our older players lead by example,” Hart said. “It helped me be prepared for this year.”
The Falcons were battling Golden Valley in a close game in the third quarter as the Cougars Emily Rowan (15 points) scored to pull GV within 36-35 with 4:03 left in the third quarter.
Hart drained two 3-pointers to help spark a 14-0 run that opened up a 50-35 lead late in the third quarter for the Falcons. Hart knocked seven 3-point shots in the game.
Hukill added four of her 17 points during the run.
“Those two are our one-two punch,” said Atwater coach JR Davis. “They both can get it going.”
The young roster and a tough non-conference schedule made for a bumpy ride to start the season, but Davis feels that steep learning curve helped prepare his girls for CCC play.
“We’re really young,” Davis said. “We start two sophomore, two freshmen and a junior. We’re still waiting for that mature. We’ll do some amazing things and then it’s like what just happened? I wanted to make sure our preseason schedule was as tough as possible so when we got to league it would seem easy. We played teams that had three or four girls that were 6-foot-4.”
Thursday’s win extended Atwater’s CCC winning streak to 24 consecutive games. The Falcons haven’t lost a CCC game since losing to Merced 47-46 on Feb. 6, 2020.
“We want to keep the streak going,” said Hart.
El Capitan 64, Buhach Colony 43 — Shantelle Magana scored 18 points to go along with three steals to help the Gauchos improve to 2-0 in the CCC.
Mya Farr added 10 points and three steals.
