The Wright City girls basketball team placed fourth at the Orchard Farm Tournament on Dec. 19. In pool play, the Wildcats won their first game against St. Pius 50-12 and fell to Jerseyville 62-44. 

In the third place match-up, Wright City fell to Duchesne 47-33. 

“Overall, I’m pretty pleased with our effort, especially how we ended the tournament in our last game against Duchesne,” Head Coach Dustin Elledge said. “We had positive attitudes throughout the whole game and really just came together as a team to finish out the tournament.”

In the third-place game, Wright City trailed 31-30 at the end of the third quarter after being down 10-3 and 18-13 at the end of the first and second quarter. 

“It was a close, close game. The biggest thing was we just kept pushing through,” Elledge said. “We hung with them pretty well throughout the fourth quarter, only down by five with about three minutes left or so. It kind of fell apart towards the end a little bit, but overall, we did a nice job.”

Elledge noted their rebounding allowed them to create more chances for themselves. 

Overall, Elledge credited senior Paige Rees and sophomore Ada Ferrell for their performances throughout the week. 

Rees recorded 20 points against St. Pius and tallied 11 points against Jerseyville. Ferrell had five rebounds and three steals in their first tournament game and six rebounds and three steals against Jerseyville. 

“Paige has a great week offensively. Ada also had a great week defensively, good ball pressure, creating turnovers and getting steals,” Elledge said. “All around, it was a great team effort by all the others involved.” 

The tournament also allowed for the whole bench to get involved in at least two of their games. During the St. Pius game, Shiriah McRoberts and Kaitlyn Mikus both had eight points, while Zoe Mitchell recorded seven rebounds. Kaylee Mikus grabbed six rebounds. 

With the end of their 2024 portion of the season completed, Wright City holds a 3-5 record. Elledge is starting to see strides of improvement, despite wishing they could have a couple games back after falling short by five or less points. However, he puts those games in the win column. 

“At this point, we’re kind of switching our focus. We have our home tournament when we get back from break and we’re pretty confident that we should be able to be really successful in that. Hopefully go on a nice little streak there and then hit some conference games going into January,” Elledge said. “We’re really looking to just build momentum and make strides towards competing in those conference games.”