BOSTON CITY GIRLS CHAMPIONSHIP

It's playoff time. After both teams came off of blowout wins in the semifinals in addition to winning their respective division regular season titles, the championship was up next. The reigning champions of the city, the Lady Tigers of O'Bryant would play host to the opponent they beat last year, the Lady Panthers of Fenway High School. Both teams pretty much had no trouble beating their opponents in the semis. They both did so by double digits.

Here we go, Fenway right from the start had their chemistry together. In addition to their excellent rotation of the ball, they used their new center 6'2 Jalissa Ross to completely dominate the paint. The other 4 girls would straight press forcing shots from the perimeter and easy turnovers in the post. Due to the short height in the post under a towering Ross, they got into early foul trouble. the quarter ended with a breakout 15-4 lead from the Lady Panthers.

It got ugly real quick with O'Bryant fouling into the double bonus with amazingly 6:08 left in the half. Then the pressure really turned up as they missed open shots and didn't crash the boards hard enough. To add insult to injury, Tajanay Veiga-Lee would hit a couple long balls to close the half. Fenway was sitting pretty 27-11 at halftime.

But, not so fast, O'Bryant came out with a hard half court press that translated into a 6-0 run that spanned from the start of the 3rd until the 3:25 mark of the 3rd. That's where Veiga-Lee would score and go back to the line. 4 of the starting 5 for O'Bryant (Daley 4, Kelsey 4, Bradshaw 3, and Green 3)would now be in personal foul trouble. This would lead to the double bonus by the 2.2 sec mark of the 3rd. Much of this was caused by Veiga-Lee who took over scoring 8 of the team's 11 3rd quarter points. So into the 4th after an unintimidating run to start the half, Fenway led 38-22.

A couple clutch shots by Veiga-Lee and C. Matthews would seal the game and foul out Kiana Daley who finished with O'Bryant's team high 11. It was all over and the revenge that was sought for last year's defeat at the hand of O'Bryant was achieved. Even with the coaching change of John Rice to the Fenway team, the city title was accomplished. It helps that title MVP Tajanay Veiga-Lee and most of her squad returned from last year's game, so Rice (13 previous girls city titles) had no problem coaching them to victory. Both Coach Rice and the MVP had these words to say after the win.

1st 2nd 3rd 4th Final
Fenway 15 12 11 20 58
OBryant 4 7 11 12 34

Fenway- T. Veiga-Lee 23, C. Matthews 16, K. Cox 10, J. Ross 8, L. Chandlor 1

OBryant- K. Daley 11, R. Kelsey 9, A. Bradshaw 5, S. Kaba 4, A. Green 3, L. Dorsinville 2