Lady Mules rally to beat Adna, head to state

Never turn your back on the Lady Mules.

The Wahkiakum Mules girls basketball team trailed Adna for nearly all of the 32 minutes of their regional game on Saturday, sometimes by as much as 10 points. In the last four minutes, the Lady Mules’ hard working, never say die attitude paid off as they finally started to breach Adna’s consistent lead. With 1:11 on the clock, Reigha Niemeyer hit a three and the girls were down by one. And with about 20 seconds left in the game, Megan Leitz hit another three, to pull the Lady Mules up by two, and bring Mule fans to their feet. Adna had no answer, and the Lady Mules won, 46-44.

Leitz had the biggest game of her varsity career, leading the team with 19 points. Jansi Merz added 13. Kim Watkins had five points. Miya Kerstetter scored four points. Reigha Niemeyer had three points, and Paige Mace had two.

"I have to give Adna credit, they played solid defense and hit their open shots,” Coach Rob Garrett said. “We didn’t play our defense most of the game and struggled to score early, but this group never gives up and they believed beginning to end that we were going to win. It was great to see some of our young girls grow up right before our eyes.

“There were some amazing passes that would have surely been turnovers even just a couple weeks ago. The girls really took the skills they have been working on in practice to the game when it counted last night. Jansi (Merz) was a beast inside, Reigha (Niemeyer) hit a clutch three again, and you have to talk about Megan (Leitz) simply stepping up for her teammates when they needed her most. I was so happy for these kids. They work so hard for this, it was great to see them overcome all of those challenges.”

Lady Pirates 13 10 12 9 --44

Lady Mules 10 8 14 14 --46

The win against Adna gave the Lady Mules a bye for the first round of the State 2B tournament in Spokane. They will face the winner of Wednesday’s Colfax/Toledo game on Thursday at the Spokane Arena at 12:15 p.m.