AUGUSTA — Hall-Dale opened with one bang and closed with another.
And that was more than enough to send the Bulldogs to the Western Class C girls’ basketball championship game.
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Carylanne Wolfington scored 16 points and grabbed 11 rebounds to lead No. 1 Hall-Dale to a 45-36 win over No. 5 Traip Academy in a regional semifinal Thursday afternoon at the Augusta Civic Center.
Hall-Dale (19-1) will play No. 3 Livermore Falls (17-3) in the title game at 7 p.m. Saturday. The Andies edged No. 2 Waynflete 31-27 in the other semifinal.
“I’m so excited,” said Wolfington. “I can’t wait for the next game. I want to cut the nets down.”
Taylor Massey finished with nine points and eight rebounds despite sitting part of the second quarter and most of the third because of foul trouble.
Wendy Goldman added seven points, and Kristen Buck had six rebounds for the Bulldogs.
Selena Lorrey led Traip (11-7) with 14 points — including 10 in the second quarter. Sarah Orr scored seven points and Alli Barrett had six for the Rangers, who never led.
“Hall-Dale forces you out of a lot of what you want to do,” Traip Coach Paul Marquis said. “I would have liked to start out a little bit better, though.”
Hall-Dale raced out to a 17-3 lead. The Bulldogs made six of their first 12 shots and opened up a 10-0 advantage in the first five minutes.
Massey controlled the paint early, scoring six quick points before heading to the bench with two fouls with 3:12 left in the first quarter.
The Bulldogs didn’t falter, at least not initially, and extended their lead.
“It was definitely frustrating,” Massey said of the foul trouble.
Traip missed its first 13 shots and had just one field goal in the first quarter.
“Down 12, 14 points, it felt like 25 to Hall-Dale,” Marquis said. “But I didn’t think it would be a game that we would let get away from us.”
It wasn’t.
Traip slowly climbed back with Massey on the bench, closing the second quarter on an 8-3 run to pull within 26-22. Lorrey scored six of those points.
“We had to settle back down,” Hall-Dale Coach Brandon Terrill said. “We were tired at the half. We needed to take a few breaths.”
When Orr forced a turnover and drove for an easy layup two minutes into the third, Traip trailed just 27-26.
But the Bulldogs scored six points in the final 45 seconds of the third – four from Goldman – to extend their lead to 35-26.
They put the game away early in the fourth with a 9-0 run, with seven points coming on free throws.
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