Northside girls 6-1 for first time since 2021 with 59-point win over Rutland

WARNER ROBINS — The Northside Lady Eagles are 6-1 for the first time since 2021 as they continue to turn the program around under head coach ChoRhonda Gwaltney-Harris.

Their 59-point, 79-20 win over Rutland (4-5) is the second this season of 50 or more points, and third of 40-plus. A five-point lead ballooned into 26 by halftime, and Northside continued to pour it on in the final two quarters as they held the Lady Hurricanes to just three baskets in the second half.

A year ago Gwaltney-Harris said their 3-0 start was not indicative of how good the team was, though she seems to feel differently this time around.

“The teams we played weren’t up to par last year. This year I feel like we’re much better than we were last year,” Gwaltney-Harris said. “We beat Union Grove at the very first game, that’s a quality team…which was a big, big thing for us…We lost to Westside [Macon] because we didn’t have enough energy, we didn’t play hard enough that game…The rest of the games we’ve kind of ran away with.”

After Forest Park (0-8) next week the schedule gets much harder, though. Perry is having a decent season under first-year coach Austin McIntyre. Valdosta comes to town and then Northside-Columbus before region play starts.

The Lady Eagles look night and day different from last year. Their fundamentals, particularly on defense are much improved. They don’t foul as much playing defense nor do they have as many careless turnovers.

Several years ago Northside was a program that fell into the “doesn’t know how to play basketball” category, but now they’ve clearly separated themselves from those kind of teams.

Gwaltney-Harris isn’t satisfied just yet, however.

“We’re not where we need to be,” she said. “We’re just finding our way right now, and we’re working on being together as a team and rotating. Tonight we’ve seen a little bit of that, we got better at that…[but] we’re not where we need to be.”

UP NEXT

Northside will host Perry on Saturday, Dec. 13 at 3:30 p.m. as a part of their final five region games.

Rutland will travel to Howard on Wednesday, Dec. 10 at 6 p.m.