The Catskill Chronicle

Story and photos by Ted Waddell

Victory is Ours! Tri-Valley’s Bobby Beale and Khristian Newkirk.

GRAHAMSVILLE – It was a classic tale of two halves.

Battle Royale. Tri-Valley’s Steven McInerny goes up against Jen Jensen-Reinke of the Family School.

In Monday’s boy’s varsity non-league basketball game between the home team Bears of Tri-Valley (4-5 overall, 1-3 league) and the Family Foundation School Falcons (2-9 overall, 1-2 league), comparing the first half to the second, was like night and day.

The Falcons came out with some high intensity verve on offense, but in the second half retreated to their usual stance of not matching their level of play in the first frame.

At the halftime buzzer the Bears had a skinny snakeskin slim three-point advantage (35-32), but in the second outpaced the Family School 27-7 to win the game 62-39.

The Bears Khristian Newkirk sets up a play.

The Falcons jumped out to a 22-19 lead in the first period but in the second period Tri-Valley responded by outgunning the Family School by six points (16-10).

The third frame was decisive for the home team as they demolished the Falcons by 17 points (21-4), and even after both coaches sent in their subs in the final period to gain some minutes, the Bears prevailed 6-3.

Bears double digit hoopsters: Ross Bonnell (23 points), Peter DiMilia (10 points), and contributing a ‘three’ each were Bobby Beale, Dean Winters and Mike Alvarez.

Isaac Moore of the Family School posted 14 points including a shot from outside the paint.

Who’s in Control? JT Helmke of the Family School and Tri-Valley’s Richard Johnson.

Stats from the free throw line: TVCS 15/23 (65%), FFS 4/7 (57%).

Early in the game, the score was tied 13-13 in the opening frame, and again even up at 22-22 in the second period until the Bears began to pull away, and once ahead never really looked back.

In the fourth period, depending upon what side of the floor you were on, the game was either well in hand or far out of reach.

During the contest, a couple of “bigs” in the guise Tri-Valley’s Ross Bonnell and Jens Jensen-Reinke of the Family School engaged in a no holds barred battle on the boards, neither of the big men giving an inch. But, when Bonnell squared off against players with less height, it seemed like David facing Goliath out there on the court, except, in a little twist on biblical history, the big guy won.

Cheers! The Bears basketball cheerleaders were out in force.

“When we swung the ball out to number 24 (Isaac Moore), they had three or four guys on him,” said Ted Towsley, coach of the Falcons. “He wasn’t able to force his way in there, and wasn’t able to make his passes…that’s what took us out of the flow a little bit.”

Reflecting upon what he called a “game of two halves”, Towsley said, “My guys like to play one half or the other…they haven’t figured out that they need to come in and play two halves of basketball.”

No matter how you slice it, that’s 32 minutes of high school hoops – two halves or four periods, you’ve got to be there all the time if you want to win instead of getting clobbered.

David and Goliath. Ross Bonnell of the Bears and the Falcons Jason Dabrowski.

Bears coach Brian Tingley said that for most of the first half, the Falcons were running a high post offense, and directed his players to pinch it off, thus taking the fire out of the Family School’s offensive
strategy.

“Once we got a handle on that, things went better for us.” Tingle added, “They’re scrappy and when we went to the basket number 42 (Jensen-Reinke) blocked a few of our shots.”

“If you took the ball down into the paint, you knew you were going to be in trouble.”

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