The El Dorado Springs Lady Bulldogs finished off their upset run as a No. 4 seed by beating No. 2 East Newton for the district title on Saturday.
Both the Lady Bulldogs and the Lady Patriots saw their marquee players—Kameron Schaaf and Koty Cooper, respectively—miss most of the second quarter after each picked up her second foul. El Dorado took advantage as Hannah Kruckenberg knocked down three jumpers to help give the Bulldogs a 14-12 halftime lead.
“I don’t mind playing without Cooper in that area, she’s a great player,” El Dorado coach Beau Swopes said. “It kind of evens some things out and makes the game just a little bit different. I feel like we’ve got some girls that are really good team players, and we’ve got a couple that can take over a game but things didn’t fall for them tonight.”
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Cooper, a six-foot senior, turned the tide East Newton’s way in the third quarter, scoring 10 of her game-high 16 points as the Pats nudged ahead 27-25. She was aided in the personal run by the absence again of Schaaf, who earned her fourth foul with 4:35 left in that period.
Down 30-25 with 5:30 left in the contest, Bulldog coach Beau Swopes finally pulled the trigger and put his all-stater Schaaf back in. She immediately responded with a bucket down low for her team-high 13th point.
“The third and fourth quarters were a struggle when Schaaf was out and Cooper was in,” said Swopes. “We were playing good enough defense. I thought, we can leave her out. If it was a high-scoring game and they jumped ahead 15 on us, I probably would have brought her [Schaaf] back earlier. When they got to five, I don’t know if it was the magic number in my head, but I thought that down two possessions, we hadn’t been doing well from the outside, that was the time to get her back in and she definitely changed the pace of the game.”
At 1:58, Cameron McPeak canned a three-pointer from the right wing to put El Do up 35-32. That would prove to be the game-winner as Cooper missed a couple of point-blank shots in the paint and Anyssa Salazar added one free throw with 6.8 seconds left for the final margin.
“She hit a big shot,” Swopes said of McPeak. “Schaaf comes back in the game and everybody’s mood changes. They feed off of her and are confident that we’ve got other options and McPeak hits a huge shot.”
“Both teams played as hard as they possibly could,” said Patriot coach Erin Rice. “Our shots just weren’t falling, and you know they went into a shooting slump there for awhile, then we did and when it came down to the end, they were able to pull away and we missed easy shots. We did everything we were supposed to, and plain and simple, shots didn’t fall for us tonight.”
It’s the first district title for the Bulldogs since 2014, when they went on to win the Class 3 state championship. They’ll next challenge Strafford in the sectional round on Wednesday at Carthage.
East Newton 9 3 15 5—32
El Dorado Springs 7 7 11 11—36
East Newton: Koty Cooper 16, Kortney Cambers 11, Emily Sorrell 3, Kinsey Sorrell 2.
El Dorado Springs: Kameron Schaaf 13, Hannah Kruckenberg 6, Anyssa Salazar 5, Paige Esry 4, Cameron McPeak 4, Kinli Simmons 3.
