By Anastasia Stepankowsky

A sluggish start and poor teamwork doomed the Chief Sealth Ladyhawks (5-10), who took a 56-36 loss to the Roosevelt Roughriders (7-9) in girls Metro Conference action Friday night.

“I think that our biggest downfall is that we don’t have the cohesiveness that these teams that are at our level have,” Chief Sealth head coach Katie Jo Maris said. “Because they have that, they fight all game for each other, and our team doesn’t seem to do it.”

Both offenses came out lukewarm at tip-off. Roosevelt and Chief Sealth both failed to score on their first possessions. But the scoreboard got its first chance to light-up with a short shot from the field from Roosevelt’s Lucy Morrill making the score 2-0.

The Ladyhawks managed to stay close despite failing to net a single point from the field until junior guard Allison Hadaway scored with 2:36 left in the second quarter. Hadaway ended with 18 of Chief Sealth’s 36 points.

The team eventually scraped together enough energy to finish the half only eight points behind Roosevelt.

“In the first quarter we started off slow. We kind of lacked the energy. I thought in the second quarter we kind of picked it up and closed the gap a little bit. But in the end, in the fourth quarter, they just wanted it more,” Hadaway said.

In the second half, Chief Sealth started to close in, managing to pull within six points for brief periods of time. Then a couple easy baskets from Roosevelt crushed the team’s momentum. Because of the abysmal offense and mediocre defense from the first half, irreparable damage had been done.

Maris had some blunt words for her team afterward.

“We were mellow even though we were losing. I believe we came out in the second half, and we were battling, but we can’t seem to shake off a mistake once something cuts our momentum down,” Maris said.“…I believe that we were the better team. I think we lost due to our lack of effort.”

Chief Sealth is at Holy Names Academy next Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.