Manchester girls fall in state title game

Never quit.

Never, ever, quit.

Easy to think. Easy to say. Difficult to do, especially if the odds are stacked tall against you and fate throws one challenge after another into your path.

Thursday afternoon at the Siegel Center, the Manchester Lancers fell far behind Osbourn Park (Manassas) almost from the outset of the VHSL Class 6 championship game, courageously fought their way back into contention, repeated the cycle early in the fourth quarter, and then, when the clock ticked to zero, watched as the Yellow Jackets celebrated their 48-42 victory.

“Tough one,” said Manchester coach Rasheed Wright. “I really wish we hadn’t dug ourselves in a hole. This is a very, very resilient group. Even though the game didn’t start the way we wanted it to, I was very confident that we could scratch and claw and get back into it.

“We did that. We had opportunities to make some plays. We just came up short.”

The Lancers (26-2) won the opening tap, and 23 seconds in, 5-2 senior guard K.K. Edwards (10 points) scored on a putback.

Then, Key Rainey, a Towson signee, took control, and the Yellow Jackets (25-5) launched into a 16-0 run while using their trademark pressure man-to-man to limit Manchester to 0-for-11 shooting.

Finally at 0:43 of the first quarter, Rylee Thomas, who had just come off the bench, stopped the barrage with a 3-pointer from the right wing and Madison Smith followed with a layup at 0:05, which cut Manchester’s deficit to 16-7 entering the second.

“I knew I had to bring my best for my teammates,” said Rainey, a 5-8 senior guard who scored 24 points including the Yellow Jackets’ first 10. “They know how to find me. I know how to find them. We work together as sisters. That’s how we got this (win).”

This was the Lancers’ fourth consecutive trip to the state championship game. They won in 2024 and lost to Osbourn Park 60-48 a year ago.

The players know each other well both from interscholastic competition and the travel circuit, which is why Yellow Jackets’ coach Chrissy Kelly felt anything but relaxed, even when her squad held a 14-point lead and firm control of the momentum.

“They’re so well-coached,” Kelly said of Manchester. “When we got off to a hot start, it actually made me more nervous than comfortable because when you do, you tend to let down your guard. 

“(Wright) knew that. He knew when to call timeout and what to say to his kids. Whenever they came out of a timeout, they were effective.”

That was true, of course, but for the Lancers, the problem was that even though they outscored the victors 40-32 after falling behind by 14, they couldn’t completely undo the damage Osbourn Park wreaked with its first-quarter blitz.

It wasn’t that they didn’t try.

By halftime, they cut their deficit to 22-16.

At 6:40 of the third quarter, Mya Adkinson’s 3-pointer from the right baseline off Finley Weaver’s drive-and-dish assist halved the difference to 24-21.

“We’d made some mistakes, we got down early, but we believed in ourselves,” said Weaver, a 5-3 senior guard playing in her fourth title game. “We knew if we started hitting our shots and taking care of the ball better, we could come back.”

Though Rainey spent much of the third quarter on the bench because of foul trouble, her teammates held the Lancers at bay and went into the fourth up 35-29.

“It was super hard,” said Rainey of her spectator role, “but I knew (my teammates) had my back. Everybody had each other’s backs on defense, and they stepped up. That was really important.”

As were the layup by Tierney Myers at 5:42 and, after a mad scramble for a 50-50 ball near midcourt, the 3-ball by Janey Salinas at 5:17 that put Osbourn Park ahead 42-31, the Jackets’ first double-digit lead since early in the second period.

Once again, when the Lancers saw daylight, they found themselves scrambling mightily to get back in the game.

“You can always come back,” said Edwards, a four-season veteran.  “Honestly, I just have so much faith in these girls that even when we do get down, we just make runs.”

Which the Lancers did, this time with the clock becoming a factor, the pace intensifying, and the margin for error diminishing.

After Wright once again called time to regroup, Smith, a 6-5 junior who also missed time in the second half because of foul trouble, hit a layup off Adkinson’s assist.

Weaver then sank 2-of-2 free throws, and Edwards converted a steal out of their own well-played pressure man-to-man into a layup which closed the gap to 42-37 with 3:50 remaining.

“I knew we had the lead, but I wasn’t sure how much,” said Kelly of the moment the Yellow Jackets went up by 11. “When you’re looking at the scoreboard from my perspective, you don’t really see the clearness of (the difference between) the teams. 

“(Wright’s) timeouts are so effective. We knew they’d make a run. I just knew that defensively, we had to trust in what we’d been working on all season long.

 “Ultimately, that won us the game.”

Rainey’s bucket from close range put Osbourn Park up 44-37 at 3:26.

Edwards’ layup following a foray into the paint through traffic cut Manchester’s deficit to 44-39 at 3:03.

Rainey responded with a short jumper at 2:10 to increase the Yellow Jackets’ lead to 46-39.

Weaver’s 3-ball from the right wing off Adkinson’s assist trimmed Osbourn Park’s advantage to 46-42.

The Jackets then ratcheted up their defensive pressure causing the Lancers to come up dry on their last five field goal attempts, and Jayel West’s two free throws with eight seconds remaining provided the state champs with their margin of victory.

Osbourn Park, state runner-up in 2021 and 2022, shot 17-for-40 from the field and 12-for-17 from the free throw line, collected 39 rebounds (10 offensive, 29 defensive), and forced eight Manchester turnovers. The Lancers’ ledger read 14-for-56 shooting from the field and 9-for-12 from the line, 29 rebounds (14 offensive, 15 defensive), and 17 forced turnovers.

“I felt like we had a really good game plan,” said Wright, “but when you’re fighting back the whole game, it’s a different strategy, a different mindset, than if you’re playing head-to-head or if you have a lead.

“Outside of that, I’m extremely proud of just being here again with this group. It doesn’t feel good to lose, but these kids have worked extremely hard, and they have nothing to hold their heads down about.”