Jessica Escalante was tops amongst a strong freshman class for the Dos Pueblos girls basketball team against Santa Ynez, scoring 24 points in her high-school debut to lead the Chargers to a 67-47 season-opening victory.
Escalante and two other freshmen started the game, and another freshman, Sara Sessler, was the team’s second-leading scorer with 12 off the bench.
The Chargers, who graduated seven seniors from last year’s team, got some needed senior leadership from captain Meghan Murphy with 10 points.
Assistant coach Mike Gerken credited junior Sara Crane with providing a strong defensive presence that started several fast-break opportunities that led to easy points.
“(Sara) showed the freshman girls how defense is supposed to be played at the high-school level,” said Gerken, who was pleased with the performance but knows there is a lot of work to be done before Channel League play begins in January.
“We’ve still got a lot of learning to do but they gave us an idea of what they can do,” Gerken said
