The long winter wait is over, and high school sports got back on track with Newtown High School’s girls’ basketball team beating visiting Bethel 41-21 on February 8.

Newtown jumped out to a 19-5 halftime lead and cruised behind stellar defense.

“Everything’s predicated by our defense. We were great defensively,” said Newtown Coach Jeremy O’Connell, whose squad compiled 15 steals — seven by Chloe O’Connell and five by Maddie Patrick.

“I think everyone played really well defensively. We rebounded the heck out of the ball in the first half and beginning of the third quarter,” Coach O’Connell said.

Allie Bradley led all players with ten rebounds, seven on the defensive end of the court, and Bella Gerace totaled five rebounds.

The Nighthawks spread out the scoring with Patrick leading the way with ten points, Bradley contributing eight, Bella Gerace scoring seven, Julia Gerace and Emma Magazu both scoring six, and O’Connell tacking on four. The Gerace sisters each canned a 3-pointer.

Newtown showed no issues with mask-wearing per coronavirus protocol, despite the team’s up-tempo style of play.

Patrick beat the buzzer with a long two-point field goal from the right corner to give Newtown a 28-11 cushion through three quarters of play.

NHS made things look easy at times, but left room for improvement in different facets of the game. They missed some in-close looks and need to improve on boxing out and getting to rebounds off opponents’ foul shots, Coach O’Connell recognizes. But knowing there are areas of the game to work on is not a bad thing at all when coupled with a victory, especially in game one.

“Anytime you can get a win and you can improve on things, it’s a great thing,” the coach said.

Newtown’s bench got some varsity experience, with Macey Cuomo, Kristen Reisert, Izzy Marie Caron, Kendall Reed, Molly Connors, and Molly McCleary all getting playing time and contributing to the triumph. The Hawks were without captain Shea Murphy on the court due to injury and are hopeful of having her back during the abbreviated season.

After a 6 pm home game with Immaculate of Danbury on Thursday, the Nighthawks visit Weston on Saturday, February 13 at 1:45 pm, and travel to Brookfield on Monday, February 15 at 6 o’clock.