The Potomac School girls basketball team isn’t kidding when it says its No. 1 goal this season is to rejoin the upper division of the Independent School league (ISL).
The NOVA Nineteen 15th-ranked Panthers fell from that division after last season and have dominated play throughout this year’s campaign. Saturday afternoon Potomac School scored an 87-56 win at home against upper-division and rival squad Episcopal to improve to 15-0.
The ISL’s top division is one of the most competitive in the region, sporting national attention-getting squads such as Sidwell Friends, Georgetown Visitation, and others.
Per league rules, the last-place team in the upper division each season slips to the lower bracket for the next year and the lower-bracket regular season champ moves up to take its place.
The Panthers can claim the regular-season title next week when it faces once-beaten Georgetown Day, who fell to Potomac School by 10 this season. Potomac School came into the game averaging just under 60 points per game with an average winning margin of 30.
Saturday’s win was dominant from the second quarter on. The taller Panthers controlled the glass at both ends and used pressure defense to force many turnovers that were quickly converted to layups. When Episcopal scored and pressed, Potomac School used precision passing to break the pressure easily and continuously found easy baskets (or eventual put-backs) in the paint.
Vienna freshman guard Catherine LeTendre was the beneficiary of much of the action. She led the Panthers with a career-high 26 points. She scored seven straight points late in the first half to give Potomac School a 48-32 lead.
She tallied five straight during a third-quarter spurt, helping her team open a 27-point lead in a game where several minutes were played with a running clock.
“We have a deep team and we trust everyone that they can score; it’s not just a one-person team,” said LeTendre, who decided to forgo playing public school ball for Madison.
“Our defense was the key, leading us to plenty of shots inside. [Up-tempo] is the way we play – get steals and go.”
LeTendre said she chose to play at the McLean-based private school “because of its whole package of academics and athletics. When I first came here, right away I could tell, this is where I need to be.”
Senior teammate and Great Falls’ Kayla Rolph, a William & Mary commit who scored 19 points, was another factor in LeTendre’s decision.
“Kayla has been a great mentor for me,” LeTendre said. “Sometimes I can be hard on myself, but she’s always there to support me. She’s been through what I’ve been through so she knows [what to do and say].”
LeTendre’s off-season training partner sophomore Ava Sawi put on a show in a losing cause. She finished with 37 points (five three-pointers), despite sitting out for minutes of the third quarter after taking a fall during the game.
“Our plan was to try to slow her down,” said Panthers coach Mike Hutton. “When she had 21 at halftime, we said let’s try to keep her under 30. Well.”
Hutton said his team is thriving this year due to its 11-deep roster and that the younger players are basketball-first athletes. “In the past, we had girls who were multi-sport athletes focused primarily on other sports. “There’s a good wave of players coming in for us,” Hutton said.
Potomac School freshmen Zora Burrell had nine points and Skylar Giuliani added 12.
Potomac School raced to a 11-point lead midway through the first quarter before Sawi and Hannah Boone (12 points) sparked their team’s rally to cut the deficit to 25-24 early in the second quarter.
–Paul Bergeron
@PaulBergeron3