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Firestone senior guards Shaia Horton (left) and Tayelor McCalister helped the Falcons turn up the defensive pressure for a 58-40 win in the City Series championship game over Kenmore.
AKRON, Ohio – The Firestone Falcons and Kenmore Cardinals entered Wednesday night’s City Series girls championship game seemingly as even as possible after splitting their regular-season meetings in two closely contested games. However, Firestone used a swarming full-court defense to definitively win its third straight City Series championship with a 58-40 victory.
“We had to put pressure on the ball,” Firestone’s Tayelor McCalister said. “I definitely had to use my speed and move my feet. I played my defense and did what I was supposed to and listened to my coaches.”
McCalister, a senior guard, was all over the floor for the Falcons, scoring a team-high 20 points, making key passes, rebounding and helping to force 31 turnovers out of a short-handed Kenmore squad that eventually turned the game.
“We won, that’s the gist of it,” Firestone coach Audley McGill said. “All of them played real good defense, Tayelor scored a lot of buckets off turnovers. Our defense was relentless.”
The Cardinals were missing four rotation players, including starting guard and second-team All-City performer Charnae Coleman.
Kenmore was able to stay in the game for three quarters thanks to the performance of City Series player of the year, junior guard Porshae Hearn (28 points). Hearn, a junior, sank a long 3-pointer at the buzzer of the third quarter to cut the Firestone advantage to 37-27. The Cardinals just couldn’t get enough balanced scoring as only three other players tallied points for Kenmore, and only Essence Bell was able to make more than one field goal.
“She really stepped her game up. She’s the player of the year and she deserved to be player of the year,” Kenmore coach Yontami Jones said. “A couple times we over-passed and just had a couple players not willing to shoot.”
The Falcons however weren’t ready to let the Cardinals back in the game and kicked off the final period with a 17-2 run led by junior forward Mishae Roper. Firestone’s greatest post presence scored seven points on that run and ended the game with 13 points and 13 rebounds.
“This was an opportunity for a lot of people to see (Roper), because a lot of people don’t know about her,” McGill said. “She gets a lot of second-chance shots. It helps out bigtime offensively when we are struggling.”
The junior’s ability to stay active on the glass and keep possessions alive helped to boost the Falcons’ confidence even further as the game wore on.
“It feels real good (to be City Series champion),” Roper said. “We knew if we worked hard enough we could win.”
The one area where Kenmore was relatively successful was denying Firestone senior guard Shaia Horton her shot for most of the night, holding the talented shooter to just 11 points.
“If we hold Horton to 11 the next time we play them we’ll be able to get something going,” Jones said. “If we could have shot the ball the way we were supposed to things could have been different.”
However, the Cardinals' defense spent so much energy focusing on keeping Horton from scoring she was able to find and incorporate her teammates setting up McCalister, Roper and Brooke Morgan to really hurt Kenmore.
“Since they did go box-and-1 on me, it opened up my team for a lot of open shots and layups,” Horton said. “My teammates were able to step up and do what they needed to do.”
By the time the game was over both sides were already thinking about a potential fourth meeting of the two squads in the state tournament. The Falcons are the second seed at the Medina Division I district, where the Cardinals are the third seed. If both teams advance that far they would meet in the district semifinals.