The Mount Si Wildcats girls’ basketball team went into last Wednesday night’s game with the Newport Knights looking for sole possession of second place in Kingco 3A. But instead, the Wildcats found out how important their freshman star is in order to succeed.

With Madison Yakaboski on the bench with three fouls in the second quarter, the Knights pulled away and took an 11-point lead into the break and maintained that lead throughout the second half for a 65-54 victory. Among the top scorers was senior Tricia Dixon. Dixon scored 21 points, including nine in the third quarter on three straight three-pointers.

“Our approach we talked about at practice this week … We wanted to attack them; [they’ve[ got a lot of talented kids, but being young, I think, and forcing them to defend and not just play offense was the key for us tonight and I thought we did a good job with that, and obviously it paid some dividends. It helped us to have Madison on the bench for awhile there,” said Newport coach Travis Whitaker.

Yakaboski finished with just four points, all of which were scored in the first quarter. Tara Eddings and Nicole Remish each had 12 points, and Symone Shaw put together another strong game and finished with 10 points. Senior Dani Quinn with 14 points, and senior Brittany Duerr, with 13, paced the Knights.

Wildcats’ coach Dirk Hansen praised both teams.

“We could have easily been blown out a couple times, but my girls battled back and it wasn’t our best night of basketball, and you’ve got to give credit to Newport. Man, I’ll tell you what, they worked awful hard for rebounds tonight. They just simply outworked us on the boards,” Hansen said.

Mount Si stayed the course without Yakaboski.

“I didn’t really see any change. We did have our ups and downs without her, but I think we pulled along better than I thought we would,” Eddings said.

Whitaker is excited about what the second half has in store for his experienced crew. With eight seniors leading a deep team (14 players are listed on their varsity roster), just like the Wildcats’ boys basketball team, the Knights are 6-1 in league.

“We’re looking forward to the second half, seeing teams a second time and seeing if we can adjust to some of the things we saw, and just try and keep getting better,” Whitaker said.