Saints Fall to Pacers on the Road

By -

    Our Salem Saints took on the Pilgrim Pacers of Minneapolis last Friday night. Although our Saints came up short (final score: 33-68), the lopsided final score does not truly reflect the high competitive level of this game. The first half was a very physical, back-and-forth thirteen minutes of basketball (halftime score: 15-30). I was pleased with the way our Saints used our God-given athletic abilities to match the speedy Pacers. Unfortunately, much like last week, our opponent blew the doors off in the second half, going up and down their small court at high speeds as our Saints wore down. Even though it got very lopsided towards the end, there were many positives to take away from this game as we focus on snapping this losing streak.
    Eighth grader Griffin (14 points) led the Saints by turning in quite a gritty performance. Despite playing through extreme pain throughout the entirety of the second half, Griffin did a great job of slicing into the lane and converting floaters and contested layups into baskets. Seventh grader Alexis (4 points) gave the Saints an impressive boost of energy by stealing the ball and going nearly the entire length of the court to make a layup at full speed. Alexis also had a very nice blocked shot on the defensive end to save an easy basket for the Pacers. The coaches were very proud of her important contributions in an extremely intense game against a very tough opponent!
    Another positive aspect to take away from this game was our overall improvement from the free throw line. After struggling mightily in the previous few games (25%, 40%, 31%), our Saints shot better from the free throw line last Friday (7/14, 50%).
    Obviously, there still are many things for our Saints to work on and clean up in practice. Turnovers are the number one issue right now, along with defensive rebounding and overall communication/awareness.
    The Saints are back in action next week against Crown of Life.

By: Coach Travis Koester

Popular posts from this blog

Update on Stillwater School Board's Proposed Change of Start Times

By -
This is an update on Stillwater School Board’s proposal to change school start times in 2019-2020. The Stillwater School Board met last night and one of the topics on the agenda was the proposed changes in starting time to accommodate a later start for the high school students.  This change in start time for the high school would affect the start and end time for Salem students.  In the proposals presented last night, Salem would start school between 9:15 and 9:40 a.m., and end between 3:45 and 4:10 p.m. Jane Grobe and I spoke on how starting later and getting out later would affect our students’ learning and how it would disrupt family schedules. The middle school, where some of our students participate in after-school extra-curricular activities, would have their school day ending at 2:00.  That would mean if students left Salem for after-school activities, they could miss over 2 hours of instruction to be at the start of the middle school activities. The board’s discussion on th
Read more

School Board Meeting

By -
Salem Board of Education/Education Committee Meeting - The Board of Education meets at the same time as the Education Committee.  Their next scheduled meeting is Tuesday, March 13, at 6:30 p.m.  People that would like to address the board may request time at the beginning of the meeting by contacting the principal, Roger Zolldan (rzolldan@salemlutheran.org), or the chairman, Karl Paulsen (kvkthethinker@gmail.com).  The meeting will go into closed session after the people that signed up to speak are finished with their topic.
Read more

URGENT NOTICE: NO SCHOOL, Tuesday, January 29 AND Wednesday, January 30, 2019

By -
School will remain closed on Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2019 and Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2019 due to the extremely cold temperatures and dangerous wind chills predicted. Some school closing links you can monitor: http://kstp.com/schoolalert/ http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/school-closings/ http://www.kare11.com/alert-center#alert-center-closings http://www.fox9.com/closings Blessings on your time off. This information was posted at 12:10 PM on 1/28/2019. If you have subscribed, you will receive an automated email containing this information after the fact, around 4 PM on 1/28/2019. Please be aware that this is not an error, but this is how our system is configured. For live information, you can always visit our blog at https://salemsaintsmn.blogspot.com/ .
Read more