The Colonia High School girls basketball team won its fourth in a row, a 39-24 victory over JFK, to improve to 7-4 on the season. The Patriots will look to keep their winning streak alive when they go up against Carteret at 7 p.m. Jan. 18. In the first meeting between the two teams, Colonia cruised to a 57-38 win.
Against Kennedy, the Patriots played without standout center Simone Smith. Smith went down with an injury early last week. The team leader in scoring and rebounding was sorely missed against the Mustangs.
“We didn’t have a good first half,” Colonia head coach Tom Chmiel said. “We applied some full-court pressure in the second half, and that got us on the right track. Kennedy did a good job of running its offense in the first half, but our pressure didn’t allow them to set up their offense in the second half.”
“Our pressure led to some easy baskets,” Chmiel said. “I think some nerves were involved in our slow start. We knew we were going to need some other players to step up with Simone out of the lineup, and as a result, we had a pretty balanced attack.”
Sophomore Chelsea Cimilluca led the team with nine points, with several other Patriots finishing with five or six points.
“When you lean so much on one kid, there tends to be a drop-off in performance,” Chmiel said. “To win without Simone should be good for our confidence.”
Fellow sophomore Nicole Scanlon helped break the game open in the second half with consecutive three-pointers.
“Nicole’s buckets gave us some good separation,” Chmiel said. “She got hot at the right time for us.”
Colonia began its four-game winning streak with a win overWoodbridge, which got the team back to the .500 mark.
“Woodbridge was on a four- or fivegame win steak of its own,” Chmiel said. “We were very happy to beat them – they’re a good team.”
The Patriots also scored wins over Monroe and Sayreville during the current streak. Despite losing Smith with a sprained ankle, Colonia topped Monroe 51-40. In a thriller against Sayreville, the clutch foul shooting of Nicole Aquila and Sasha Hall down the stretch helped the Patriots earn a 52-50 win.
In other related news, Chmiel and the Patriots will host a shoot-a-thon 1-5 p.m. this Saturday at the high school. All proceeds will go to the Bristol-Myers Squibb Children’s Hospital at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital and its affiliation with The Cancer Institute of New Jersey, and participants from grammar school age to high-schoolers are scheduled to participate. Interested participants should contact Tom Chmiel at (732) 499-6524.
“The idea is for players to get family members, friends, neighbors to sponsor them,” Chmiel said. “Some sponsors pledge a dime per shot, so if a kid makes 20 shots, that’s a $2 donation from a sponsor. It’s a great way for our kids to contribute to the community.”