Hamilton falls to No. 1 West Catholic in first-place showdown

Hamilton’s Kaylie VanDerHulst takes a three during a game against West Ottawa Friday, Dec. 15, 2022, at West Ottawa High School.

HAMILTON – The Hamilton girls basketball team knew it was going to take an outstanding performance in order to beat OK Blue foe and perennial frontrunner West Catholic.

The Hawkeyes were able to keep things close for the first five minutes of the game, but the Falcons eventually showed why they are the No. 1-ranked team in Division 2, blowing things wide open over the last 10 minutes of the first half in a 71-32 win on Tuesday night in a battle for the league lead.

“It happened so fast,” Hamilton coach Jacquelyn Malloch said of West Catholic putting the game out of reach before halftime. “They are very well-coached, very disciplined, and extremely athletic. They don’t take any plays off ever. It’s a relentless wave that never stops coming at you, which makes it go from a one-point game to a 20-point game in the blink of an eye.”

West Catholic (13-0, 6-0 OK Blue) looked like they might be in for a battle early on, as Kaylie VanDerHulst hit a short jumper and Kaitlyn Geurink drained a 3-pointer to give Hamilton (9-4, 5-1) an early 5-0 advantage just over a minute into the game. The Falcons answered quickly, though, rattling off the next 11 points before a wing 3 and a bucket down low from Hamilton’s Kyra Kleinheksel brought the Hawkeyes back to within 11-10 just over midway through a fast-paced first quarter.

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West Catholic amped up its defensive pressure to close out the quarter, finishing on a 16-2 run to move out to a 27-12 lead after the first eight minutes, It was more of the same in the second quarter, as West Catholic outscored Hamilton 23-7, heading to the locker room up 50-19 at the half.

“It took us just a little bit of time to get going here this evening and we talked about a couple of adjustments really quick at the start of the game,” said West Catholic coach Jill VanderEnde. “We know that Hamilton is a very talented team. They exposed a couple of things that we needed to clean up, but then we made a big spurt. I think that’s what is so nice about our team is that we are playing for each other. We know that all of our kids are capable of having a good night and our team chemistry this year is really special. We have big goals and big dreams for this season, so we’re just trying to get them as prepared as possible for something fun come March.”

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Kleinheksel scored all 12 of her team-high points in the first half for Hamilton. She also pulled down five rebounds.

“Obviously (West Catholic) is a really good team and that’s who we wanna be one day,” Kleinheksel said. “We executed our game plan pretty well, but we just struggled with rebounding quite a bit. When we were up 5-0, I was like, ‘This is our game, we can do this.’ That’s a little bit of a confidence boost that we stuck with them for a while. We could have made it closer and that wasn’t our best game, but I’m hoping for the next time we play them to go better. We need to focus on the other games we have left in order to get (at least) second-place in the conference. This is a game we’re gonna learn from and get better in practice starting tomorrow.”

Malloch echoed Kleinheksel’s sentiments.

“Realistically, (West Catholic) has to have an off-night for us to beat them and they shot the lights out tonight,” Malloch said. “We’re not gonna spend too much time being down about that because ultimately they’re a very good team who also had a really good shooting night and we were on the other side of that. So we learn from it, we take away the positives, and we try to clean up the negatives. We have Coopersville on Friday and we look forward to that game.”

Hamilton’s Kyra Kleinheksel looks to score under the basket Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2023, at Holland Christian.

Jeralyn Hoppes scored all eight of her points in the second half for Hamilton on a variety of hustle plays. VanDerHulst chipped in seven and Geurink added five for the Hawkeyes.

West Catholic, who finished the game with 20 steals, was led by sophomore Elisha Dykstra, who scored all 15 of her game-high points in the first half. She also dished out seven assists and grabbed five rebounds. Her older sister Cadence, a University of Toledo commit, chipped in 14 points, nine steals, eight rebounds, and six assists for the Falcons. Rebecca Tuttle and Reese Polega both scored 10.

This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Hamilton falls to No. 1 West Catholic in first-place showdown