Lady Cruisers' season comes to an end

The Lady Cruisers traveled to Fort Vancouver High School on Thursday night to take on the La Center Wildcats in a loser-out contest in the District 4 playoffs.

Unfortunately, the outcome wasn't any better than their first meeting, and the Wildcats ended the Cruisers' season with a 61-32 loss.

Hailey Rath led the Cruisers with 12 points to finish her career at Eatonville with 1,074 points. That total ranks her fourth all time at Eatonville High School.

Earlier in the week, the Cruisers took on the Columbia-White Salmon Bruins.

Both teams got off to a slow start in the first half, but the Cruisers took over in the third quarter by going on a 14-2 run to take the lead and never gave it up to take down the Bruins 41-33 at Rainier Connect Arena Feb. 15.

After trailing by five points at the end of the first period of play, Eatonville fought back in the second behind Rath's five points to pull within two of the Bruins, 15-13, at the half.

The Cruisers came out hard in the third quarter, stepping up their defense and causing many turnovers that helped them go on a 14-2 run thanks to Rath's five points and a couple of timely three-pointers by Berkeley Porter and Bailey Andersen to take a 27-17 lead into the final period.

The Bruins wouldn't lie down, though, and cut the lead to three at one point in the fourth quarter only to have Porter hit a crucial three-pointer to deflate the Bruins and extend the lead out to six.

Porter scored seven of the Cruisers' 14 points in the final frame and pulled down five of her eight rebounds on the night to help the Cruisers avoid elimination.

Rath led the Cruisers with 15 points and seven rebounds. Andersen scored seven of her 11 points in the second half to help lead the Cruiser comeback. Porter dropped in 10 points to go with her eight rebounds.