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HealthyHeartMonth

Healthy Heart Month 2020

LEHMAN TWP. &mdash; An angry group of Lake-Lehman Black Knights felt pretty frustrated about missing the first-ever playoff for an overall Wyoming Valley Conference championship last season.
				They didn&rsquo;t miss much this time.
				Claire Dougherty scored a game-high 16 points Thursday, Sarah Salus hit her career 1,000th and Division 2 runner-up Lehman leveled high-flying Division 1 champ Dallas 50-35 in a league semifinal at Lake-Lehman High School.
				&ldquo;We got gypped a little last year,&rdquo; Salus said. &ldquo;But we didn&rsquo;t let it bother us too much.&rdquo;
				Instead, Lehman&rsquo;s 6-footers Dougherty and Hailey Kline bothered Dallas&rsquo; hot shooters with long-armed defense, holding high-scoring Lauren Charlton to eight points through three quarters while building a 39-26 lead entering the fourth.
				&ldquo;It was all about playing the part,&rdquo; Dougherty, a sophomore, said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m the post player on the team, I drive it in, then I dish it out. It&rsquo;s all about everyone playing our parts.
				&ldquo;And we do it really well together.&rdquo;
				It worked to perfection Thursday, as Lehman moved to 15-8 overall by avenging an 11-point Dec. 19 loss to Dallas while dropping the Division 1 champion Mountaineers to 20-4 overall.
				Lia Keefe collected all five of her points in the third quarter and Chase Purdy, Dougherty and Salus all scored four in the period as the Black Knights bolted out of halftime with a 6-0 run and out-gunned Dallas 19-6 over the first eight minutes of the second half.
				Salus, who came in needing 10 points to reach her milestone, hit her 1,000th point on her second basket of the second half off a second straight feed from Purdy. That gave Lehman a 33-23 lead midway through the third quarter.
				&ldquo;She&rsquo;s a four-year starter,&rdquo; Lehman coach Charlie Lavan said. &ldquo;She stepped up this year when we needed some leadership.&rdquo;
				The Black Knights ran away from there, straight into Saturday&rsquo;s 6 p.m. battle with Hazleton Area for the overall WVC championship at Berwick Middle School. Both were No. 2 teams entering the tourney and both shocked division champions to get there.
				The layup by Salus only capped off Lehman&rsquo;s unexpected celebration.
				&ldquo;It feels great,&rdquo; Salus said. &ldquo;I never really expected to get 1,000. To do it in such a big game means a lot.&rdquo;
				What the rousing victory meant was confirmation of what the Black Knights knew for two years.
				They have what it takes to battle among the top teams in the WVC.
				Only last year, the Black Knights didn&rsquo;t get the chance to prove it.
				They were left out of the four-team league playoff tournament by percentage points when Berwick claimed the wild card spot over Lehman, which was decided by District 2 power rankings. That sent Berwick to play among the WVC&rsquo;s three division champions while Lehman was left to watch.
				This year, the playoff format became simplified when the WVC was whittled into a two-division league, sending the top two finishers in each division into the league playoffs.
				&ldquo;We put a priority on this in the beginning,&rdquo; Lavan said. &ldquo;We were on our home floor. Tonight, we had a very solid performance.
				&ldquo;We proved we belong here.&rdquo;
				The Black Knights took control from the start, as Dougherty got started with four points in the first quarter to stake Lehman to an early 11-7 lead.
				Dallas caught a spark when Julia Kocher came off the bench with six points in the second quarter, helping the Mountaineers tie the game at 20-20 by the break.
				But coming out of it, Purdy wrapped two buckets around a Salus layup to break the deadlock and Lehman never looked back.
				Dougherty put the exclamation point on the victory by using a three-point play to boost the Lehman lead to 20 points with under two minutes to play as the Black Knights reached the league title game with an emphatic statement.
				&ldquo;It&rsquo;s so important to us,&rdquo; Dougherty said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve just been gelling as a team. People are starting to play in the right positions. We&rsquo;re the youngest team in the tournament. We have such a bright future.&rdquo;
				That future may begin Saturday.
				&ldquo;The last two years, we split with Hazleton,&rdquo; said Lavan, whose team lost to the Mountaineers, 56-31 in the second game of the season, on Dec. 7. &ldquo;Maybe we can split with them again this year. They&rsquo;re a very good team. It&rsquo;s a good one.
				&ldquo;I&rsquo;m really looking forward to it.&rdquo; 
				WVC Semifinals
				Lake-Lehman 50, Dallas 35
				LAKE-LEHMAN (50) &mdash; Lia Keefe 2 0-0 5, Hailey Kline 3 2-2 8, Claire Dougherty 7 1-1 16, Chase Purdy 4 1-4 9, Sarah Salus 6 0-2 12, Madison Brdaric 0 0-0 0. Totals 22 4-9 50.
				DALLAS (35) &mdash; Haley Habrack 2 0-0 5, Deanna Wallace 0 0-0 0, Lauren Charlton 4 0-0 11, Claire Charlton 1 0-0 2, Morgan MacNeely 1 0-0 3, Bella Hill 4 0-0 8, Julia Kocher 3 0-0 6, Nadia Evanosky 0 0-0 0. Totals 15 0-0 35.
				Lake-Lehman`11`9`19`11 &mdash; 50
				Dallas`7`13`6`9 &mdash; 35
				Three-point goals &mdash; LL 2 (Dougherty, Keefe); DAL 5 (C. Charlton 3, MacNeely, Habrack).

Dougherty, Lake-Lehman pull upset in girls basketball league semifinals