As the regular season comes to an end, Twin Cedars is ready to give credit where credit is due. The Sabers will hold their senior night on Monday as Hartwik-Ladora-Victor comes to Bussey.
Among the players to be recognized include Sabers girls Chloe Swank and Jenna Hastings as well as the trio of Jace Nichols, Kade Dunkin, and Brett Sedlock for the boys team.
Girls Head Coach Trent Verwers says that he has always been impressed with the efforts of his two elder players during his tenure.
“This group of seniors, we only have two. Chloe Swank and Jenna Hastings. Those two girls were sophomores when I took over and accepted every bit of the challenge that I gave to them when I first got here. They’ve stayed with the course. It’s going to be good to finally send them out.”
The Twin Cedars basketball teams played in their final contests of the annual Bluegrass Conference tournament Thursday and split their matchups on the consolation side of the bracket. The Sabers girls fell to Diagonal 25-24 and the boys defeated Moulton-Udell 64-41.
The Sabers girls were led by Brooke Roby and Jenna Hastings, who each scored eight points. Despite having a great defensive showing, Head Coach Trent Verwers says that you simply can’t win without putting up 30 on the scoreboard yourselves.
“We can have our best defensive night of the year, but at the end of the day if you don’t put up even 30 points it’s going to be hard to win. We just got to get another win and then I think we’ll be back to moving along. We got some tough teams coming up. It’ll be nice to get that double digit win first. Tonight would have been an easier night to do that as opposed to who we got coming up. It’s not impossible, but just not where it needed to be to win.”
Coming off a sweep of Tri-County Thursday night, Twin Cedars repeated that effort Friday against Orient-Macksburg on the road. The Sabers girls won 52-45 in overtime and the boys came out on top 46-32.
In the first half of the double header, Twin Cedars’ Brooke Roby went off for 29 points and 10 rebounds. Cheyanne Bruns added another 13, including three shots from beyond the arc. This was the Sabers’ fifth game in seven days, and they went 5-0 in them to improve to 9-6. Head Coach Trent Verwers praised his girls for keeping their composure after a subpar defensive performance that saw their wire to wire lead vanish in the closing moments of regulation.
Twin Cedars basketball played in their fourth double header since Saturday, and got their first sweep Thursday night at Tri-County. The Sabers girls won 37-24 and the boys bested the Trojans 56-46.
The Sabers girls had a tight contest for the first three quarters, but outscored Tri-County by eight points in the final eight minutes to get their fourth win in six days. Cheyanne Bruns led the way with 17 points, nearly half of the team’s total. Twin Cedars continues to build to their best record in nearly a decade as they’ve yet to lose a game in the new year. With all this winning, Head Coach Trent Verwers says that this is a pivotal moment for his program, especially with most key players set to return for another year.
The second game back for the Sabers was a mirror image of the first as they split a double header at Diagonal Monday. The Twin Cedars girls won 35-34 and the boys fell 48-40.
The Sabers’ girls were led by Brooke Roby’s 12 points, 5 assists, and 5 steals, but it was Cheyanne Burns who played hero as she scored the winning basket with less than 30 seconds left. At 6-6, this is the latest into a season that Twin Cedars has been .500 or better since 2012. Head Coach Trent Verwers adds that he needed to incorporate all of his girls as Diagonal closed in on Roby defensively the entire game, which led to a “great team win.”