MANCHESTER, NH – Young and undersized, but no-longer underestimated, the Derryfield School girls basketball team is now one win away from reaching the state championship game.
That, after the second-ranked Cougars pulled away late in their playoff matchup with seventh-seeded Souhegan (14-6) to earn a 37-32 victory Saturday night.
To get there, Derryfield first completed a 16-2 regular season to secure a first-round bye and home matchup in the quarterfinals.
And with this increasing compilation of successes, the Cougars continue to live out head coach Courtney Cheetham’s dream for the program when she petitioned up from Division IV to D-II three years ago.
“We returned one starter from our team last year and some other kids who played minutes but didn’t start,” she said. “So I think, for me, I love winning. I want to win, right? But I want kids to use this as a chance to practice what hard work and resilience can look like, and you can’t get that unless you’re in a lot of hard games, and the best way to do that is play at the highest level you can and learn from hard moments, and that’s going to translate to life lessons, so that’s what I feel good about. I want that challenge for them.”
That certainly played out against Souhegan in the quarterfinals. Having lost to the Sabers during the regular season – 38-33 on Jan. 23 – the Cougars quickly found themselves in a dogfight, heading to halftime knotted at 18, with junior guard Holly Dufoe producing 13 of those points.
“Holly works really good to be as good as she is,” said Cheetham, “and I think all our kids do that, but Holly is in the gym shooting 300-400 shots (a practice), so when people say she’s a good shooter, it’s not just because she’s a good shooter and shows up, it’s because she does what she needs to do to get better, and she balances that now with really high academic (success), so I expect that from her because I think confidence comes from preparation, and she prepares a pretty high level.”
Though Souhegan made adjustments to slow Dufoe’s offensive production in the second half, she was still able to help Derryfield take a 25-23 advantage out of the third quarter.
Then, in the final frame, Souhegan responded with two quick baskets to take the lead. But the Cougars clawed back with two-straight baskets from captain Ella LaFlamme, the team’s lone senior, to move ahead, 31-29 with just over 5 minutes remaining, and then held on for the victory.
“That’s another kid who is in gym in her free time, gets here early, you know, first one on the court practicing her layups,” said Cheetham of LaFlamme. “She sometimes can get hurried up, and she did that in the first half, so I think she just locked in in the second half and made some key baskets at quality times, and that’s our senior, so I expect her to want it and dig in a little more when we need it.”
Indeed, while Dufoe finished with a game-high 18 points, LaFlamme led a group of five players who also contributed to the second-half scoring including Jordan Lemery, Anna Fazelat, Emma Sloper and Angie Kenison.
“It came down to a couple possessions,” said Cheetham. “I thought our kids did a really great job in the second half, just settling a little bit and valuing our possessions and trying to get some stops and some rebounds. We hit a couple bunnies and got a couple stops, so that was key.”
That defensive effort proved pivotal as the Cougars didn’t allow one Souhegan player to reach double-digit points, though Cheetham recognized the visitors didn’t make it east.
“I thought that Souhegan played their hearts out. I thought they gave us everything we could handle,” she said. “Their shooting was great, they got after it on the defensive end.”
Cheetham pointed to the regular season setback against Souhegan as a defining moment for her squad.
“We lost to them on Jan. 23 and I think we learned a lot of Jan. 24 … and I think today was very different,” she said. “We used that to recognize that we need to show up and compete every single day to improve, so it was kind of a motivation for our kids.”
Former Manchester Memorial head girls varsity coach Greg Cotreau, now at the Souhegan helm, recognized Derryfield’s improvement since the last time the two teams met.
“I think their defensive pressure gave us more fits than we saw before. To me, that was the main thing. Like, the score was almost identical (on the inverse),” he said. “I kind of said, going into this game, we’re two teams that are literally like looking in the mirror at each other. So it was going to be that close, and it was just going to come down to who executed better in the end, and we missed some layups and free throws that kind of hurt us in the game, and they just made a couple more than we did.”
Cotreau, having competed against three of the four teams remaining in the playoffs, said the race for the championship is still wide open.
“I thought, in the quarterfinal round, any of the teams left standing was capable of winning a championship, he said. “And I thought there would be upsets … and this was 40-50 seconds away from maybe being an upset too, so I think any one of the teams standing is able to win the whole thing.”
Cotreau’s point was proven earlier in the day Saturday when sixth-seeded Merrimack Valley (15-5) traveled to third-ranked Bow (16-4) and earned the upset victory to setup a semifinal matchup with the Cougars.
Derryfield earned a 44-35 win in its lone regular-season matchup at Merrimack Valley on Feb. 13.
“I think they’re super athletic. They have some seniors on that roster that are really good athletes … and then they have some other kids who can hit shots,” said Cheetham. “We had a battle with them at MV, and I expect it will be a battle again. Kind of two somewhat similar teams, so I wouldn’t say it was my No. 1 pick of who to play … so we’re going to give it everything we have and see where we land.”
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