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Special night for Lake-Lehman seniors

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Local sports: Misericordia removes interim tag off Willie Chandler

The game had long been in the bag.But the star scorer for Holy Redeemer kept coming out to the floor to bag easy buckets.With the team&#8217;s full starting lineup beside her. With a few subs on the floor. And in the final few minutes of an 81-19 victory over Northwest, with a whole group of backups for both teams surrounding her.That&#8217;s when Rebecca Prociak scored her 40th point of the night.&#8220;I didn&#8217;t ask,&#8221; Prociak said when someone wondered if she lobbied to stay in to attain her career-high point total.She didn&#8217;t have to.Because while Prociak was busy scoring all those points, Holy Redeemer coach Chris Parker chose to make his own point.&#8220;I just made a conscious decision to leave her in the game,&#8221; Parker said. &#8220;For the whole game.&#8221;Parker has no peeves with Northwest, and insists his intentions aren&#8217;t to pile on against badly-beaten opponents.He&#8217;s just sick of pulling punches, purely for statistical purposes.&#8220;It&#8217;s important for me to take care of my kids as a coach,&#8221; Parker said. &#8220;Stats mean a lot to these kids. Rebecca is going to have a chance to win the Wyoming Valley Conference scoring title. I just left her in for a little while, let her play pretty much the whole game. It was the whole game.&#8220;For the last couple years, every year, I&#8217;ve been in this situation.&#8221;It&#8217;s a no-win situation, from where he stands.His Holy Redeemer team is a perennial power, drawing talented athletes from all over Wyoming Valley to a Catholic school juncture that&#8217;s become a league juggernaut.The Royals didn&#8217;t get much competition while dominating the league&#8217;s Division 2 during the past decade, and since last season, they&#8217;ve been dropped to a weaker Division 3 - where the second place teams this season are below .500.Lopsided victories are bound to happen.But in the name of good sportsmanship, when the game&#8217;s out of hand, the starting cast of characters for the Royals are expected to sit on the sidelines. Typically, that point comes during the opening minutes of the second half.And Parker&#8217;s tired of playing games of political correctness by pulling starters to appease the opponents his team beat.&#8220;I&#8217;m forced to sit my kids,&#8221; Parker said, &#8220;when all the other kids around the league are playing a full game. My kids are only getting to play about half the game. I want them to get the recognition they deserve.&#8221;Don&#8217;t discard the theory.The last 10 of Prociak&#8217;s points came in the fourth quarter, after Redeemer had built a very comfortable 45-point lead while the clock was continuously running under the mercy rule.Afterwards, social media outlets buzzed about her 40-point performance, a magic number in girls basketball. That wasn&#8217;t likely to happen if she sat on the bench with 30 during the game&#8217;s final eight minutes.In the process, she kept her reign as the WVC&#8217;s top scorer while averaging 24 points per game, and surged to the top of the league&#8217;s free-throw leaders at 85 percent.A small percentage of Northwest fans were outraged, loudly asking Parker through the fourth quarter if his team had enough points yet. Northwest head coach Amy Kachinko was unavailable for comment.After all, this is the same Holy Redeemer program that humiliated MMI Prep, 125-13, last season.Parker gets the idea behind that grief. But he also has to try to get his team prepared for a playoff run, and he doesn&#8217;t believe they&#8217;re ready for one right now.&#8220;We&#8217;ve got to start to click on all cylinders,&#8221; Parker said, &#8220;and be in the right frame of mind down to the end of the season.&#8221;He has grown tired of minding the widening gaps on the scoreboard at the expense of fine-tuning his team.Practice makes perfectAnyone who watched Rebecca Prociak struggle with foul shooting earlier in her career couldn&#8217;t have envisioned she&#8217;d turn into a can&#8217;t-miss clinician from the free-throw line.Yet, the Holy Redeemer standout is right at the top of the entire WVC in free throw percentage (among players who have shot 30 or more foul shots this season).Prociak&#8217;s 16 for 16 free throw performance during her 40-point night against Northwest on Monday helped elevate her to best in the league, as she&#8217;s now shooting 85 percent from the line and has missed just 10 of her 68 free throws on the season.That&#8217;s a testament to the sheer will of Prociak, who spent countless hours through her high school career perfecting a craft that was once torture for her.&#8220;It&#8217;s never been natural,&#8221; Prociak said. &#8220;For the past four years of high school, that was definitely my weakness. I&#8217;ve been working and working on it.&#8221;Eventually, Prociak worked her way straight to the top.Ending the suspenseAll three WVC division leaders have a realistic shot at clinching league championships this week, which would turn the final week of the regular season into a battle for little more than playoff positioning.Holy Redeemer will likely become the first team to wrap up a title in Division 3, as the Royals currently hold a four-game lead over both Meyers and Northwest with five to play.The Royals can pretty much expect to lock up their second consecutive crown in Division 3 since moving down a division last season this Wednesday night when they travel to MMI Prep &#8212; which hasn&#8217;t won a league game in more than three years and hasn&#8217;t even been competitive in most games this season.Next up is Nanticoke Area, which is unbeaten in Division 2 and owns a two-game lead over Wyoming Area because the Trojanettes won both head-to-head meetings between the teams this season.That could grow to a three-game advantage by the end of Monday night, as Wyoming Area faces powerful Redeemer. If that happens, the Trojanettes could very well make Friday&#8217;s game a celebration of their second straight Division 2 title when they host GAR &#8212; which sits at the bottom of Division 2.Securing first place in Division 1 by the end of the week could be a little trickier for Hazleton Area, but it&#8217;s do-able. The Cougars are a game up on Pittston Area, but the Patriots could have their hands full with a Crestwood team that&#8217;s suddenly surging during the second half of the season.If Pittston Area falls to the Comets and Hazleton Area wins its first two games this week, the Cougars can capture their second straight Division 1 title by beating Pittston Area in Hazleton on Friday night.That would make a clean repeat of division winners from last season.Of course, Pittston Area has other ideas. If the Patriots can sweep the week, they&#8217;ll take the battle for first place in Division 1 into the season&#8217;s final two games next week.A magnificent nightThis hasn&#8217;t been an especially stirring season for Meyers, but that didn&#8217;t stop the Mohawks from putting it all together on one magnificent night.During a 63-45 victory Thursday against Northwest, Meyers came very close to fielding four players with double-doubles.Senior Gianna Skaff led the way with 15 points and 14 rebounds, fellow senior Tiffany Muniz scored 10 points and made 11 steals, Erin Morris finished with a team-high 16 points and eight assists while Bella Skaff pulled down 12 rebounds to go with her seven points.That tremendous team effort allowed the Mohawks to pull even with Northwest for second place in the Division 3 standings at 3-5.<style>
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<div class="neCaption">Holy Redeemer senior Rebecca Prociak (right) scored a career-high 40 points against Northwest, boosting her league-leading point average during an 81-19 victory over second-place Northwest. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/web1_prociak.jpg</photo0><caption0>Holy Redeemer senior Rebecca Prociak (right) scored a career-high 40 points against Northwest, boosting her league-leading point average during an 81-19 victory over second-place Northwest. </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta>By Paul Sokoloskipsokoloski@www.timesleader.com</bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta>Reach Paul Sokoloski at 570-991-6392 or on Twitter @TLPaulSokoloski</shirttailMeta></div>

A Royal dilemma for Holy Redeemer’s girls basketball team