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Dynamic Damsels: Union Uses Balance to Earn Another Big Road Win, This Time at Karns City

KARNS CITY, Pa. (EYT/D9) — Dominika Logue doesn’t mind scoring seven points.

There was a time when the senior on the Union girls basketball team needed to score three times that for the Golden Damsels to have a chance to win a game.

Not so these days.

These days, Union has a plethora of weapons.

No. 13 doesn’t need to do it all.

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Redbank Valley, Keystone, and Union/A-C Valley sports coverage on Explore and D9Sports.com is brought to you by Heeter Lumber.

“I’m fine with that,” Logue said, smiling after her seven-point performance Monday night in a 47-40 road win over Karns City. “You’re not coming to play Dominika Logue. You’re coming to play the Golden Damsels.”

It was another big night for those Damsels, who had just knocked off previously unbeaten North Clarion — also on the road — Thursday.

Keira Croyle scored 15 points. Hailey Kriebel added 13. Kennedy Vogle scored 10. Those three have taken quite a bit of the burden off the shoulders of Logue, who scored her 1,000th career point last season.

Balance had been what has propelled Union.

Logue did her part, too. She snagged rebounds. She piled up assists. She handled the ball and played solid defense.

“This is so nice,” said Union coach Ally Kepple, who was a star guard herself at Karns City during her high school days. “The girls are doing a great job of stepping up. I even give a shout out to our bench, the way they cheer at away games. It really gets our varsity squad going.”

Union (6-1) certainly got it going in the second quarter.

After falling behind 16-14, the Damsels went on a 15-2 run to end the half to take an 11-point lead into the locker room.

Vogel scored eight points in the second after Croyle had put up eight herself in the first.

Karns City, though, scored six quick points to start the third quarter to tighten the game.

“We didn’t want to start the second half that way,” Kepple said. “But that’s exactly what we did.”

Brooke Manuel scored four of those points in the post to start the KC rally.

But for Karns City, this game had an all-too-familiar refrain.

Fall behind. Storm back. Come up a little short.

Karns City (4-5) got as close as three at 38-35 in the third quarter, and then again at 43-40 in the fourth, but could never come up with a big basket to flip the script.

“It’s frustrating,” said Karns City coach Steve Andreassi. “But at the same time, we’re very, very close. We’ll knock on the door, knock on the door, but then make a turnover, or miss an open shot.

“I’m proud of the response,” Andreassi added. “We had chances. We had a number of possessions down by three where we could have cut into it even more. There’s still some people who haven’t found that shooting rhythm. But no one is hanging their heads.”

It was the second straight gutsy win for Union, who rallied from eight down against North Clarion.

This time, the Damsels had to protect a double-digit lead to pull out a win.

“This is very big for us,” Croyle said. “We just had to keep pushing. We like to say we just keep climbing the mountain and hope to keep going and going.”

Croyle is one of the reasons why Union has been able to win without a big scoring night from Logue each time out.

“That has been super, super important for us, because in the past that has been our weakness,” Croyle said. “This year we are stepping up for one another. It’s a good thing.”

Rossi McMillen and Rosie Carden each scored nine points to lead Karns City.

Andreassi is hopeful that his team will look back at this stretch as a growing experience.

“We know we can play with any team,” Andreassi said. “Looking forward, it’s good to play quality teams like this. We learned a lot more tonight from this game than we would from playing some weaker opponents.”

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Redbank Valley, Keystone, and Union/A-C Valley sports coverage on Explore and D9Sports.com is brought to you by Heeter Lumber.