Winning any sort of title once is hard enough. To go out and defend that title, and to win it again, just ups the difficulty.

Manhattan High (3-0) girls basketball did just that, as it beat TMP (2-1) 68-55 to win the Hays City Shootout for the second straight year.

“[After the game, I was] just excited you know,” senior Gigi McAtee said. “We expected to do well, and we went 3-0 last year, and so it just felt good to get off to a good start for the season again.”

Though the Lady Indians won handily, there were some things that could be improved on.

“We could have cleaned some things up with our fouls,” junior Chrissy Carr said. “We just play so aggressive [that it’s bound to happen]. We can clean it up, and we can reduce our turnovers too.”

MHS was led by Carr, who scored 16 points. Sophomore Kia Wilson finished with 12 points, and junior Megan Worthington added 11 points.

“It really helped [that my teammates were moving around] so we could find like holes in the defense,” Carr said. “It made it a lot easier to score like when we got the ball moving, and once we got like inside touches with our posts … they scored ball inside too. So that helped a lot like to open up gaps for the wings.”

Carr, McAtee and Wilson all made the All-Tournament team.

“It was amazing and it was nice to be able to do it with two other of my teammates,” Carr said. “It was just an honor to be able to make the all-tournament team.”

One big positive of playing in an early season tournament was that the Lady Indians were given a chance to figure out what they need to work on.

“I think [we need to work on] sharing the ball between everyone,” McAtee said, “just working on figuring each other out, and how we play. [Also] working on our press, because we’re such a quick team and we have 12 girls that can play, and just getting that down so we can use that all game.”

The Lady Indians’ next game will be Dec. 16 against Junction City in the North Gym.