Staff photo / Brian Yauger
Pymatuning Valley senior Zoey Painter, center, is sandwiched by a pair of Triway defenders during the team’s first-round matchup against Wooster Triway on Wednesday in Andover. Painter led the team with seven points.
ANDOVER — Pymatuning Valley’s season came to an end on Wednesday, falling 33-25 to Wooster Triway in a first-round sectional contest.
Shots fell early against the Trojans, but eventually Triway’s defense won out and contained Pymatuning Valley.
“The aggressive ball pressure in the half-court set kind of took us out of everything we really wanted to do, and that was really it,” Lakers coach Michael Cole said. “They’re very good in the half-court man defense, and it was hard for us to get shots off. We missed some bunnies and we didn’t match their physicality.”
Under Cole, who came to Pymatuning Valley after a successful stint with Champion, the Lakers were the 12th seed in Division V, Northeast Region 2 and finished with a 16-6 mark.
“I love these kids out here,” Cole said. “They work very hard for me. I mean, it’s pretty evident today. They busted their butts today. They were flying all over the court for me, but things didn’t turn out well.”
With five seniors on the roster, including Wednesday’s leading scorer Zoey Painter (seven points), the group made Cole feel welcome instantly and helped his transition as the new coach of the program.
“They’re just a great group of kids,” Cole said of his senior class. “When (the seniors) accept you as a new coach, it just trickles down to everyone else. The seniors were number one for me in making my transition very smooth. I really hope that me coming over made a good year for them. I want to make it fun and keep it organized and everything so hopefully, they had a good time also.”
While replacing a senior class of five isn’t easy, Cole is confident in his returners.
“We’ll be fine. We return a pretty solid junior class, a really good sophomore in McKenna Jordan, our freshmen got smoothed out pretty good this year and we’ve got a pretty nice eighth grade class coming in. But I don’t care who you are, whenever you lose five seniors that you know, have all put in a lot of time, it’s always going to be a hard transition. Now we’ve just got to figure out how kids are going to fill in and how you’re going to play from then on out.”
All of that depends on the team personnel.
Jordan and junior Sadie Paul (five points on Wednesday) are expected to be relied upon more next season, but as the rest of the pieces fall in, that’ll determine what the 2025-26 season holds in store for the Lakers.
“We’re just going to have to see what type of team we’re going to be. Each year it’s different. You lose a lot of talent. We’re losing a couple big strong posts, we’re losing some good guards, so people are going to have to step up and we’ll just have to see where we’re at.”
Triway faces off against another local team as they’ll take on South Range on Saturday.