Bigfork’s girls junior varsity team gets the bragging rights of being the only Bigfork team to beat Columbia Falls last week, with their 35-25 victory over the Kats on the road.

The Vals had a narrow 14-13 lead at halftime and kept widening the gap as the game went on, outscoring the Kats 11-8 in the third and 10-4 in the fourth.

“That was the best game we played all year,” said Bigfork JV girls basketball coach Mandy Williams. “Columbia Falls beat us at home, so it was nice to beat them on their court.”

Melissa VanDerveer led Bigfork with 12 points, and was six-for-seven from the line. Lila Cenis added 10 points, and scored eight of the team’s nine second quarter points. Kate Lamm contributed seven points.

“All around everyone played great and we were short handed because we had some girls out sick,” Williams said. “We played great defense and crashed the boards really well.”

The Vals were unable to carry that momentum over to their final game of the season in Polson Friday night, and took a 51-26 loss.

Bigfork scored seven in each of the first two quarters and six in each of the last two, while Polson put up double digits in every quarter.

“We just ran out of gas,” Williams said. “Polson is a great team. They haven’t lost a game all year.”

VanDerveer and Holly MacFarlane led the Vals with nine points each in their final game of the season.

“I’m really proud of all of  the girls,” Williams said of her team. “They always played really hard all season. We were always short on numbers so they always had to play five quarters and they did a really good job. We had a great season.”

The freshman girls team suffered from the shortage of numbers due to illness among members of the BHS girls basketball program last week. This resulted in a 23-18 loss in Columbia Falls and a decision to cancel the freshman game in Polson Friday night.

Against the Wildkats Tuesday night Bigfork trailed 13-7 at the half. They were able to outscore Columbia Falls 8-3 in the third, but then got outscored 7-3 in the fourth.

“I though we did well considering how poorly we started,” said Bigfork freshman girls basketball coach Jim Epperly. “It was about as ugly as it could be, but we battled hard and didn’t give up. We even took the lead in the fourth quarter. I was really proud of them for that.”

Miranda Miller, McKenzie Shults and MacFarlane were the leading scorers for Bigfork with four points each.

The freshman girls finished out their season with a 9-7 record.

“We’re really proud of the girls,” Epperly said. “They got a lot of playing time in this year and did really well even though we were short on numbers. Coming from coaching boys basketball, they brought a lot of joy back to coaching for me. We laughed a lot and had a really great season together.”