Lady Cards close out regular season at 6-12

RANDOLPH — The Randolph girls basketball team recently shook the cobwebs off from a COVID-19 quarantine and now is hoping to get some of the rhythm they had prior to lockdown.

Randolph (6-12) had gotten on a winning track before that week-plus of doldrums, but were able to get back on the court before the subdistrict playoffs and that ended in a 55-16 defeat at home against Crofton.

Senior Jaiden Taylor, who has had a strong 2021 portion of the season, led the Lady Cardinals with nine points.

“We knew coming in to the game that this was going to be the toughest challenge we had faced all year,” head coach Marcus Papenhausen said of his Randolph squad. “Add into it that we had been off for almost two weeks of basketball and we knew it was going to be tough. The girls came into it with a good attitude and were just excited to be back on the court.”

The Crofton fullcourt pressure was the key to the defeat as Papenhausen said the team was unable to handle the challenge.

“We were slow on defensive rotations and just many things didn’t go as planned,” Papenhausen said. “The girls never gave up though and did do some good things during the game and made some hustle plays.

“It was our last home game for the year and for the careers of six great seniors. It was not the way we wanted them to go out on their home court but we are thankful for all the good things that they had done for us on that court.”

The outgoing seniors are Taylor, Gracie Eledge, Natalie Munter, Jenna Albers, Emmalee Harder and Keely Pinkelman.

Harder said it took some time for the team to just get back to feeling normal once the Lady Cardinals were out of quarantine.

“Crofton is a Class C that has always been good so that was a tough game to be our last game before subdistrict and being our first game out of quarantine,” Harder said. “It was a good first game back and practice for us because we didn’t have any expectations that we needed to win.

“(The quarantines) are definitely starting to wear on us. I think we’re lucky that it happened when it did, so it didn’t happen over subs like volleyball kind of did.”

Both sports were affected by quarantines in the final weeks of the respective campaigns.

“That kind of stinks,” Harder said. “We’re all super close and some of my best friends are on the team so that helps a lot. You have that bond, and you can talk while you are in quarantine about the crap you have to do and we’re all in the same boat.

“Toward the end we were like, ‘no one’s been quarantined, nothing has happened yet,’ and then our whole team was quarantined.”

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