Carmel savors senior success

Senior night is a time to reflect and celebrate accomplishments.

Carmel Catholic’s girls basketball team celebrated its seniors in fine fashion by blasting Libertyville 41-28 in a nonconference game Saturday night.

Kathleen Felicelli, who was one of six seniors honored, led all scorers with 16 points.

“Senior night is bittersweet because it’s one of our last home games,” Felicelli said. “It means that the school year is almost over.”

Corsairs coach Kelly Perz knows her work will be cut out for her next season, as she has only three juniors and one sophomore on her roster.

“We have a good team coming back,” said Perz, whose Corsairs improved to 15-6 overall. “It’s going to be hard to replace (the seniors).”

Leah Lach, Cassidy Kloss, Paige Gauthier, Nicole Bitter and Alexa Svoboda were the other seniors honored Saturday night.

Junior starter Emma Rappe started the game on the bench so that Svoboda could start. Bitter (8 points) started the Carmel scoring with a layup and followed with another layup. She then stole the ball and drove the length of the court.

Svoboda didn’t disappoint, as she popped in a jump shot. Gauthier followed with a two-handed hook to start a 10-0 run in the first six minutes of the game.

Becky Deichl sank a free throw to put Libertyville on the board, but the Corsairs led 17-6 after the first quarter.

Carmel was up 37-17 at the end of the third quarter, but the Wildcats weren’t done.

Libertyville (8-13) started the fourth quarter with a 7-0 run, as Becky Deichl, Claire Keefe, Maggie Piazzi and Erin Dunleavy each scored. Libertyville outscored the Corsairs 11-4 in the fourth.

Keefe led Libertyville with 9 points,

“She’s a freshman and is still learning,” Libertyville coach Greg Pedersen said. “She’s aggressive and she puts the ball in the basket when we need her.”

“This a game we would have liked to have won,” Keefe said.”But (Carmel) played well tonight.”