Sentinel photo by MIKE GOSS Juniata's Haley Mummah drives to the basket in between of JCS's Maddie Warner (10) and Jenna Glick (15).

PORT ROYAL — Juniata Christian School hosted Juniata on Tuesday night and despite a great fight from the Lady Lions the Lady Indians took the win 51-31.

Juniata Christian came out of the jump ready to prove themselves. In the first quarter they did just that as Erin Sheaffer put up 10 points on her own for the Lions, more than Juniata scored as a team in that quarter. Sheaffer was the only Lion to score in the second quarter when she sank a three-pointer from the corner.

Juniata scored nine in the first quarter, a two-pointer from Regan Lowery, a free throw from Mariska Beward, two sunk free throws and a two-pointer from Ava Shearer, and another two pointer from Mylee Landis. In the second quarter Landis added another 3 points, Shearer added another two along with Beward. Haley Mummah sunk a free throw for another point added to the Juniata scoreboard.

Juniata came out of halftime a whole new team, Beward, Landis and Grace Reinhold all added two for the growing Indian score. Lowery banked a three from the arc in the fourth quarter, while Sarah Montoya and Landis added two as well. And Shearer put up 11 points in the third quarter and seven in the fourth.

“It feels wonderful,” Shearer said about her game. “I tore my ACL last year, so coming back from this, it really does feel good. I have a great team around me, they are so helpful. They are feeding me and just making it work. Once you get the adrenaline going, I don’t feel too much pain from the injury.”

“We changed up our defense,” Juniata head coach Jim Fosselman explained about his halftime talk with the team. “We went from playing man to playing a 3-2 defense, which these kids are good at. We switched it up with that, got more aggressive, looked for the post players and sunk it. We had mismatches there we weren’t taking advantage of. We finally started to use our post, which is Ava, Miley and Mariska; they’re all good kids down there. We had them there, we just had to use them.”

Juniata Christian started the second half slower than they wanted. Sheaffer was only able to add three points to the board and Jenna Glick put up two. Juniata’s defense was able to hold Sheaffer from scoring like she did in the first quarter. But the Lady Lions would come back in the fourth quarter to finish strong adding 13 points between four players.

“There are so many times when I feel like we’re doing good, were getting it,” Juniata Christian head coach Maggie Shafferman explained. “It’s the consistency, it’s our big challenge right now. I think if we can just keep the mental game a little stronger, I think we will be okay. I have been trying to emphasize defense makes offense, and you can see when we’re good on defense it does translate to our offense, so that’s just something we have to keep working on.”

Juniata travels to Midd-West on Friday to take on the Mustangs and JCS travels to Columbia-Montour on Thursday.

Juniata 51, Juniata Christian 31

Juniata 9-17-35-51

JCS 10-13-18-31

Juniata(51) Haley Mummah 1 1-2 1, Regan Lowery 2 0-0 5, Mariska Beward 3 1-2 5, Ava Shearer 15 6-7 24, Sarah Montoya 1 0-0 2, Mylee Landis 4 1-2 7, Grace Reinhold 2 1-2 3, Reagan Burd 1 0-0 2.

Juniata Christian (31) Jenna Glick 2 0-0 5, Annika Martin 1 0-2 2, Erin Sheaffer 10 1-2 22, Abby Warner 1 0-0 2, Maddie Warner 0 0-4 0.