The Lady Pioneers Girls JV team traveled last night over to the far eastside of Indianapolis to play the Lady Marauders of Mt. Vernon High School. Mt. Vernon is a member of the Hoosier Heritage Conference that stretches across the east central counties of Delaware, Madison, Hancock, and Shelby. The Pioneers and Marauders have been playing each other since the 2019 season after the IHSAA tournament brackets realigned the two 4A schools into the same Regional competition. Both Varsity teams participated in the Decatur Central Regional in 2019 and 2022 but didn’t face each other. Last season, the Lady Pioneers JV team defeated the Lady Marauders 52-24. WIth Coach Julie Shelton at the helm, the Lady Marauders have been known to be a program that utilizes a match-up 2-3 zone defense. This defense is very difficult to learn but once mastered, the defense can frustrate opposing teams. The Lady Pioneers understood how hard that defense is to score against throughout the first half of last night’s game. The Pioneers were only able to score 6 and 4 points against Mt. Vernon's JV team in the first half and this frustration led to other flaws that hampered the Pioneers’ ability to stay within reach of winning the game. After the Lady Pioneers lost control of the game by being outscored 15-6 in the third quarter, Mt. Vernon started to let up a bit defensively and Mooresville was able to chip away just a little bit at the score. Mooresville had chances in the last minute to cut the game down to single digits and two possessions but those chances fell short. Mooresville was soundly defeated most of the game and lost by a score of 32-24 The 32-24 loss for the Lady Pioneers lowers the team’s record to 10-6 (4-1 Mid-State) on the season. Leading the Pioneers in scoring was Easther Brimmage with 9 points. The Lady Marauders JV team will return to the basketball court Friday night as they travel to Greenfield to play their county and conference rival Greenfield-Central. The next Lady Pioneers JV game will be part of this year’s homecoming activities on Friday, January 23rd. Once again the Lady Pioneers homecoming game will host the Lady Quakers of Plainfield. The Varsity game will start at 6:00 p.m. in the Main Gym and the JV game will start around 7:30 p.m. in the Pavilion. Mooresville JV 6 4 6 8 24 Mt. Vernon JV 7 8 15 2 32