OK, so they didn’t win a lot. But if basketball was always about winning, there wouldn’t be many teams out there with a desire to play.

That desire was strong this winter in the girls on two basketball teams at Langley Middle School. Though they combined for a 1-19 record, the girls on the seventh and eighth grade teams played with determination during the past two months against teams with big physical and numerical advantages.

Both teams closed out their seasons last Thursday in the LMS gymnasium. In the first game of the evening, the sevies fell 42-17 to undefeated North County League-leading Heatherwood Middle School. In the second game, the eighth-grade Lady Cougs had more offense, but still lost 55-23 to Heatherwood.

Paul Arand, the coach for the eighth-grade team, noted that the final score does not tell the whole story. In all, the Cougs actually scored 35 points, a dozen of them coming during the game’s second quarter. In middle school basketball, the second quarter is reserved for bench players who normally wouldn’t get on the floor. Whichever team wins the quarter has two points applied to the game score.

In spite of going 0-10, the Cougar eighties went at teams including Heatherwood, Lake Ste-vens, Gateway and Valley View with a positive attitude week after week.

“They had a good time,” Arand said of his team.

On Thursday, bench player Caitilynne Larmore was the top scorer for the eighties, adding 10 points to the final tally. Shelly Burton had eight points, Chelsey Backus seven and Katie Knowlton-Woods, the team’s top free throw shooter, had four. Tia Wannamaker scored two on the night.

The team was missing several players for the game due to a school band trip to British Columbia.

Flu saps sevies

The fact that the LMS seventh-grade teams stayed in their games this season was even more remarkable, considering that they always had a few players out sick.

Team coach John Pyrtek said the flu decimated his team throughout its 1-9 season. But even as the Cougs fielded several first-year players, they showed a competitive spirit in every contest, he said.

The biggest challenge during the season was going up against teams week after week that compete at the select level year round. Most members of the LMS team play several sports during the school year.

The team felt the disadvantage most keenly against the Heatherwood Hawks, who are so skilled that they have been prohibited from playing scrimmages against the school’s eighth-grade team.

The sevies spent the season focusing on fundamentals in practice. Pyrtek said team members Brooke Adams, Jem’ma Anduvante, Mary Jane Daumen, Martha-Rosio Gil-Osorio, Rachel Harris, Erica Johnson, Nicole Moore, Kayley Mulchahy, Natasha Roberts, Lauren Sandri and Jane Sinclair all showed improvement.

Both coaches said they believe LMS’s proposed move out of the North County League and into the Cascade League — which is made up of smaller middle schools — will benefit the girls basketball program.