This was the hardest secret to keep from her, but it was the best secret to keep.”

Lady Champs' Head Coach Janie Demonbreum

Chapel Hill, Tenn. – Sophie Ray scored her 1,000th career point at the end of the third quarter of Cascade’s (11-11, 4-3) massive District 9-AA win against Chapel Hill (13-11, 2-5), 49-44, on Friday night.

Caroline Parker and Lizzie Keele led the way for Cascade, each scoring a team-high 13 points. However, the story of the night was Ray, who scored 12 points total, but reached the 1,000-point mark on her second-to-last bucket of the night, a euro-step-and-one layup with 8.1 seconds left in the third quarter that sent the traveling Cascade fans into a frenzy and caused the loudest cheer of the evening.

“I didn’t even know until they [teammates] all turned me around to look at the stands that I got a thousand points,” an exuberant Ray told The Zinger 100.9 postgame. “I had no idea.”

“What she told us in the locker room was, ‘You know, I was thinking it was just a layup guys, like do we really have to be doing all this??’” said a smiling Lady Champs Head Coach, Janie Demonbreum. 

“Nobody talked to her about it because we all just wanted it to come naturally,” Demonbreum continued. “It was a bittersweet moment to sit there and see her realize ‘I just hit a thousand points’ and it made me teary-eyed because it’s a huge accomplishment.” 

“This was the hardest secret to keep from her, but it was the best secret to keep.”

Ray missed the free throw, and Cascade clung to just a seven-point lead, 30-23, at the end of the third quarter. 

“After it went in, I just thought, I got a thousand points so I just have to keep going and help my team finish this game,” Ray said. “Sometimes it’s been hard for us to finish games, and so that was just running through my mind because it was a big game to win.”

Sophie Ray (pictured) after scoring 1,000 career points on Friday.

David Smith

The Lady Rockets quickly went on a run of their own to open the quarter, outscoring the Lady Champs, 10-5, to cut the lead to just 35-33 with 3:40 to go. With the team’s leading scorer on the season, Kaegan Young, struggling and with just two points at this point, freshman revelation, Lizzie Keele, took matters into her own hands. Keele knifed her way to the basket for two of her 13 points with 3:33 left in the fourth quarter to spark a 6-2 mini-run for Cascade over the next 2:20. 

After Sadie Smith connected from downtown for three of her 14 second-half points, including her fifth made three-pointer on the night, Chapel Hill trailed by just three points, 43-40, with 50 seconds left. Young was fouled 10 seconds later, and with 39.9 on the clock, she calmly connected on a pair of free throws to put Cascade up five, 45-40, and finally out of reach of the Lady Rockets.

Typically this season when Young has struggled, so have the Lady Champions. On Friday, Cascade showed their growth as a team throughout the season, finishing with three players in double-figures scoring and a team total of 49 points.

“I think we’re all just coming together in practice, and then on the court we are sharing the ball a lot,” Ray concluded. “We all know the main goal is to make it as far as we can in the District and Region.”

As a team, Cascade shot 53% from the floor, and outscored Chapel Hill 20-8 in paint points. The Lady Rockets shot just 31% from the field thanks to pesky defense from the visitors, but they chased down 13 offensive rebounds compared to just four from the Lady Champs while only turning the ball over nine times to give themselves a chance to steal the game at the end. 

For Chapel Hill, Sadie Smith went 5/8 from downtown and finished with a game-high 19 points while Baeliy Stalnecker got going late to finish with 12 points along with seven offensive boards on the night.

Cascade held the Lady Rockets to just 13 points in the first half, but could only score 18 points of their own despite taking an 11-5 lead at the end of the first quarter. Cascade outscored Chapel Hill, 12-10, in the third quarter thanks to Ray’s splendid layup, then held on for dear life in the fourth quarter to clinch the second seed in next week’s District 9-AA Tournament in Grundy County. 

Cascade improves to 11-11 (4-3) and returns home to take on Community in the “Battle of Bedford” on Tuesday night to close out district play, LIVE on The Zinger 100.9 and AM 1400 starting at 5:45 p.m.