HOLLAND, Ohio — The Springfield girls basketball team was the preseason pick to win the Northern Lakes League for the first time in school history.
Earlier this week, they beat the defending league champs from Anthony Wayne and it’s been Kendall Carruthers carrying the team off to a hot start.
In your biggest games, you need your best players to step up. In the Blue Devils victory over the Generals on Tuesday, Kendall Carruthers dropped 28 points en route to a huge early season win.
"My mindset during the game was just to go hard each and every play no matter if a play breaks down, if I miss a shot, just keep shooting and play as hard as I can," said Carruthers. "I try to play my best each and every time. When it's time for me to go get that bucket, I don't try to put that much pressure on myself, I just play my game."
"It makes it easy as a coach when you can put the ball in a kid like that's hands and just let her play basketball," said Springfield head coach Clifton Hodges. "It makes my job a lot easier and she's just a great kid, a great athlete. I just think that moving forward she'll do some really special things at the next level. It makes our team better, it makes the program better. Just excited to have her have a really solid senior year."
For the Blue Devils, they’re in unchartered territory. They’ve never won an NLL title in girls basketball, but this might just be the year they make history.
"It feels really good. We all know we have a target on our back," said Carruthers. "Each and every game we have to play our hardest and give it all we got."
"I just told the kids to take it one game at a time. We try to scout and focus on each opponent and not look ahead at all," said Hodges. "Just taking it slow, taking it one game at a time. The NLL has some of the best coaches in the area, they're going to give us their best shot every single game, so we look forward to the challenge and getting ready to play each game."
Kendall Carruthers from Springfield High School is our athlete of the week.