Kit Comeback Falls Short At Grow The Game Shootout

Evanston’s girls basketball team faced a double whammy Saturday at the 6th annual Grow The Game shootout event at Beardsley Gym.

The Wildkits, coming off a two-week stretch of relative inactivity because they didn’t enter a Christmas tournament anywhere, had to shake off rust and a strain of the flu that has run through the entire program.

The Kits delivered on defense, but couldn’t finish off a second half comeback and dropped a 41-38 decision to Geneva.

Evanston, now 6-5 overall, held the winners to 29 percent shooting from the floor. Yet without the services of leading scorer and rebounder Charity Bryant, who was absent due to a family emergency, the host team lacked a go-to scorer with the game on the line.

And ETHS also struggled dealing with the 35-second shot clock in critical moments at the end. More on that later.

“It all came down to the execution at the end of the game, and we really been in that situation so far this year,” said Evanston head coach Brittanny Johnson. “We haven’t played a game in two weeks --- and it looked like it out there.

“It’s been hard because everyone has been sick at some point --- I was, too --- and I thought fatigue really hurt us today.”

The Grow The Game event was established by former New Trier head coach Teri Rodgers to celebrate (and encourage) the empowerment of female coaches and female referees in the high school basketball ranks. A total of 50 schools were involved this year and Evanston hosted games Saturday between New Trier and Hersey, Wheeling and Maine West, and Bloom and Mother McAuley before opening the 2026 portion of the schedule against Geneva.

The matchup allowed Johnson to match wits with Geneva head coach Sarah Meadows, whose team is off to a 5-10 start to the current season.

“There’s no coach I respect more than Sarah in the state of Illinois,” Johnson said. “That’s been a really consistent program for a long time. We weren’t as aggressive down the stretch as her players because fatigue set in and our shots weren’t falling. We made some bonehead plays, too, and hopefully that won’t happen again.”

Payton King’s 11 first-half points kept the Kits within striking distance of the Vikings, down 23-17 at the intermission. King only managed four points in the second half, however, and finished with a team-high 15. Freshman Simone Hewitt added 10 points and 8 rebounds for ETHS.

Geneva still led by a seven-point margin (30-23) entering the final period when the hosts finally flipped the script. The Wildkits held the Vikings without a field goal over the first four and a half minutes and crept into the lead when senior guard Sandra Deeney --- all 5 feet, 5 inches of her --- blocked a shot to force a turnover with her team behind 31-30.

Hewitt scored the next four points of the game, on a pair of free throws and a flash down the lane to take a pass for a layup from Deeney, to boost ETHS to a 34-31 advantage with four minutes left in the contest.

Evanston only scored four points the rest of the way. And, ironically considering that the Central Suburban League coaches voted to implement the shot clock for varsity league games this winter instead of waiting until next year when it’s officially adopted for the entire Illinois High School Association, that 35-second clock management ended up costing a team that already has experience using it.

Geneva owned a 38-37 lead when the game clock slipped under a minute and freshman center Adelyn Estabrook sank a 3-point shot from the corner with the shot clock about to expire.

Then, only trailing by three points and with enough time left on the clock to keep a normal pace of play, the Wildkits started fouling to get into a bonus situation when they didn’t have to. Only the fact that the Vikings missed four free throws in the final 22 seconds kept the final margin at three.

Geneva was paced by Keira McCann’s 13 points, but the senior guard only shot 4-of-19 from the field. Overall, the Vikings connected on just 15-of-51 attempts and only tallied five baskets in the entire second half.

“On that 3-pointer, we had some missed communication on defense and that one second made all the difference. That was big,” Johnson noted. “And I didn’t communicate well with them about those fouls, either. We have to do a better job of preparing kids for different situations like that, now that there’s a shot clock. There were a lot of lessons learned today.

“I thought we made a lot of strides in practice (leading up to Saturday) on defense, because we haven’t been a good team defensively. We focused on things we haven’t done well, like screen actions, and talking and communicating with each other, and I saw a lot better communication today.”

Evanston and defending champion Maine South will collide in a first place showdown Tuesday at Beardsley Gym. Both squads are unbeaten in league play at 4-0.