Cap City MLK Tournament Review 1/14/12
The Cap City MLK Tournament offered an excellent venue to showcase some of the local teams and their respective players. Only a few teams in the younger age groups, but a decent turnout in the 7th and 8th grade pools.
In the 6th grade pool, it was another hard fought match with BWSL Richmond and Cap City. These two programs are some of the best teams in the state in each age group. BWSL pulled out a win on a somewhat injury laden Cap City. Sierra Davis-Sparks went down with a knee injury in a previous game, and Jaelyn Harris was late arriving to the contest. With that BWSL jumped out to an early lead. Cap City closed the gap with the arrival of Harris and the game was close until the final two minutes. Harris and Az Bacot were huge for Cap City, but the combination of Jennifer Davis, Imani Edmonds, and Makenzie Ross allowed them to pull away and win the pool championship.
In the 7th grade pool, Xplosion was completely outmatched by both BWSL and Roanoke Roar. The combo 6/7/8th grade team was handed 25 points between the two 6th graders Charme Lilly and Jennifer Davis and ended up losing by that margin to BWSL. Roar hammered them as well in the second half. Xplosion then faced the Roar 6th grade team and narrowly squeezed out a victory keeping them from being winless in the tourney.
The championship came down to Roar and BWSL. BWSL jumped out to an early lead on tough man to man defensive pressure. Roar adjusted and got back in the game where both teams maintained a back and forth hard fought contest. Rachael Stovall of BWSL contributed 21 points consisting of a flurry of short jumpers around the free throw line in the second half. This combined with the play of the trio of guards Charme Lilly, Jennifer Davis, and Alexus King, it became too much for Roar and BWSL sealed the victory in the closing minutes of the game thus winning the pool championship
The 8th grade pool saw BWSL run through everyone. This incredibly talented team won all of their games by 30+ points keeping them undefeated in this young AAU season. There were some good individual efforts by players on the Cap City Ballerz, James River Blaze, and Chesterfield Aces teams, but they were completely outmatched by the strong BWSL team.
Cap City and James River's only losses were to BWSL. At the end of the day, James River tried to enact some revenge on the younger 7th grade BWSL team and while they held them to only 3 points in the first half, James River was outscored by BWSL 7th 18-16 in the second half even with James River playing its best players 90% of the game.
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