In their final conference matchup of the year Hillcrest was unable to keep up at home on Alumni Night and lost to Wapello, 46-13, on December 20.

It was a night where Hillcrest Alumni filled the seats, a band in the gym provided live music during warmups, and prizes to be given out to the audience. 

Still seeking their first win and falling to 0-5 in conference play the Ravens found themselves trailing early and could not keep pace with Wapello throughout the game.

“​​Not the way that we wanted to go into the New Year, we had kind of glimpses and moments in there but overall not a great game,” Hillcrest coach Mitchell Drey said after the game. “We had some girls sick, I don’t think we had a full team all last week. We had a couple of starters who were out sick, who came back yesterday after three or four days off and it showed, but credit to Wapello. They played great. They were the much better team tonight.”

Entering halftime trailing 25-8 the Ravens were only able to score five points in the second half, recording zero points in the fourth quarter.

“Delaney [Shaw] came in, rebounded hard. That’s kind of what her thing is this season for us, rebounding the basketball, bringing that energy in the starting lineup” Drey said about certain players who he thought played well in the loss. “I got to give a shoutout to Tara Poole coming off the bench. She got a lot more minutes tonight, had a couple turnovers than I think she would have liked but she played super hard. She knew what was going on at all times and it was great to see her get those minutes, it’s only her second month of playing basketball.” 

With December coming to a close, the Ravens will be taking some time off for the holidays. Hoping to improve their intensity going forward Coach Drey knows if his team wants to get their first win they have to stop getting off to such slow starts. 

“The competitiveness,” Drey said about what his team needs to improve on heading into the new year. “It seems like these last couple of games we’ve come out, we have been ready to go and some of the other teams have jumped on us early and then we’re playing catch up. If we can have that competitive edge going into the games, so we’re not trying to fight back a 13 point deficit, only maybe a six point deficit. That makes a whole difference in the second, third, and fourth quarter.”  

When they return to action it will be a new year and Hillcrest (0-9) will host conference opponent Columbus (4-5), on January 6.

Their next game will be another home game against a conference rival. They will face Highland (3-5), on January 10.