Glenelg Country School's girls basketball team already has clinched its league's regular-season championship, but yesterday at Oldfields, the Dragons found themselves way out of their league.
Oldfields (6-3) rolled up a 16-0 lead and cruised to a 51-27 victory in an Association of Independent Schools nonleague game.
Next week, the Dragons (12-4 overall, 5-0 league) return to the AIS B Division as the top seeds for the postseason tournament.
"I'm actually glad we had this game now," said Dragons coach Barbara Brummett. "I think it really opened our eyes that we're going to have to work hard to win the championship. We had the regular-season championship won and now we're going into the playoffs and we've got to start working a little harder."
In the tournament, the Dragons will not face a team as tough as Oldfields. Their closest competition should come from Lutheran, a team they beat by 13 in the regular season, but the Dragons know they still could lose.
"This was a learning experience," said Dragons senior guard Robin Zimmerly. "It might actually help us to realize that we're not invincible."
Yesterday, Oldfields looked nearly invincible. The northern Baltimore County team just had too much speed, too much height and too much Laurel Mullen for the Dragons to handle. Mullen, a senior guard, scored 20 points, many on transition as she and her teammates forced 19 Glenelg turnovers.
Offensively, the Dragons struggled early, forcing a lot of shots and missing their first 14. At the other end, Oldfields took better shots and hit eight of 14 in the first quarter.
Glenelg did not get on the board until Allison Hoke banked in a short jumper with 1:41 to go in the first quarter. In the second quarter, the Dragons rallied with a six-point run on baskets by Zimmerly, Hoke and Sonia Fernandez-Martin. Still, they never cut the margin below 11 points.
"They looked very intimidated after the first couple of minutes," said Oldfields coach Sven Jensen, whose team plays an independent AIS schedule and will not play in a postseason tournament. "They did have some series when they played well, but if you lose your confidence, it's hard to get back into a game."
The Dragons, with only one player over 5-8, were no match for Oldfields' 6-1 Buffy Cauthen (five rebounds), 6-0 Anja Kroll (four points, four rebounds) and 5-11 Liz Hoogenboom (14 points, eight rebounds).
However, Fernandez-Martin out-rebounded them all. The 5-5 forward grabbed 14 rebounds and also led the Dragons with 11 points.