ROYAL CITY — The Royal High girls basketball team kicked off its season last week in a fashion they’d rather forget – quickly.

The Knights started the season with a problem that persisted all of last year. They couldn’t shoot well enough to win.

The result was a 65-19 loss to Highland in the opener, and a 49-29 loss to Chelan.

There is hope, however. The Knights played a much better game against the Goats once they picked up the speed of the game. They were still battling at the final buzzer.

What did the girls in against Chelan was a slow first quarter. They fell behind 15-2. But they got into double figures in the fourth frame.

The shooting improved from 21 percent in the Highland game to 29 percent against Chelan.

The 5-9 McDarra VonStein made all three of the shots she attempted. Jennifer Ledezma, also 5-9, made five of her 10 shots. Ledezma led the scoring with 12 points. Von Stein had six, and Staci Hebdon put in four.

VonStein led in rebounds with nine. Ledezma and Annabelle Booth had five each. VonStein, Guadalupe Guadarrama and Sophia Rodriguez had one block each. VonStein and Elsie Delgado had two steals each.

The Highland game was simply bad news. Royal fell behind, 23-3, after one quarter. By quarters they scored 3, 4, 8 and 4 points.

Bianca Castellon led the scoring with eight points. Delgado pulled down seven rebounds, and Stephanie Rivera got five.