December 23, 2025
The Cards played two conference games early last week and didn’t pass the ‘eye test’ in either one. They won both but didn’t look good doing it.
In Van Meter last Friday, the Cardinals passed every test there was and beat the Bulldogs, 47-41. To beat a quality team on the road, the Cards knew they had to play better than in recent games, and they got the job done.
“The energy was way better (against Van Meter),” said Camryn Sly. “It was way more fun. And we knew that this was going to be a tough game coming off of the two games that we had. We won, but we weren’t feeling good about it. So this is really good for us to get our confidence back up and keep on keep going.”
Games against Van Meter—in any sport—always seem to have more juice. That can go either way, though, as sometimes Earlham teams have gotten a little too worked up about the rivalry. That didn’t happen last Friday. The Cards had just the right mindset for this game.
“They’re rivals, so I think there’s a mental game, knowing we want to beat them,” said Avrie Fagan. “We have to have the confidence to beat them. They played man-to-man against us, so that was different than most teams that play zone. So seeing that, we got a lot more scoring opportunities. We moved the ball pretty well tonight.”
Fagan is terrific at creating her own shots, and she did plenty of that against the Bulldog defense.
“Them being in man, we get a lot more ball screens,” said Fagan. “I really like to get that dribble drive action, creating space. That’s really my bread and butter, I guess. It’s what I like to do. So I got those shots and took them, and luckily, they fell tonight.”
In the 1st quarter, Fagan made the Cardinals’ first three field goals, scoring 7 points in 2 minutes. She assisted on Piper Koberg’s layup late in the quarter, and the Cards led, 12-6, after 1. Van Meter made just 1 of 13 shots in the period.
The Cardinals made just 3 field goals—a 3-pointer by Mackenzie Harger and 2 buckets by Darby Moore—in the 2nd quarter, and Van Meter rallied take a 20-19 lead into halftime.
The Cardinals played their best quarter of the year in the 3rd, outscoring the Bulldogs, 17-3. Fagan got the Cards going when she weaved through the defense and knocked down a 5-footer. Koberg made an elbow jumper, Fagan made 2 free throws, and the Cards led, 25-21, at 4:31. After a Bulldog basket, Sly made back-to-back 3-pointers, her first 3s of the season.
“Yeah, I feel really good about those,” said Sly. “I’ve been waiting for them to fall in because they haven’t been going for me, but now that I got those, I’m feeling really proud about myself. And it just helped get our energy back up and get the lead going.”
Fagan scored a fast-break layup, Sly made a free throw, and Kenna Harskamp made 2 free throws to push the Cardinal advantage to 36-23 at the final break.
Van Meter made a run at the Cardinals in the 4th. After they made a 3, Fagan answered with a 3 at 6:02. The Bulldogs scored the next 5 points and the Cardinal lead was cut to 8, 39-31, at 4:57. The Cards stemmed that tided when Harskamp intercepted a pass in the Bulldog front court and threw a long pass to a streaking Fagan for an easy layup. The Bulldogs took advantage of 2 Cardinal turnovers, 2 missed free throws, and a missed shot in the lane to get back in the game. At 1:26, the Cardinal lead was 41-38.
At 1:24, Sly snagged a defensive rebound, was fouled, and made 2 free throws. Harskamp rebounded a Van Meter air ball, was fouled, and made 2 free throws to push the lead to 45-38 at 1:13. Moore made 2 free throws with 21 seconds to go to put the game out of reach.
Fagan led all scorers with 18 points. The Cards committed a season-low 14 turnovers. Van Meter shot 23% from the field, including 5 of 27 from 3-point range.
Earlham Echo 
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