Chantilly Hammers Hawks

The glory days of Hayfield basketball are just a memory.

Two of the Hawks' most notable wins in the last two seasons came on the road against Chantilly, once in the regular season, and once in the regional tournament. 

On Tuesday, the teams didn't even belong in the same gym as the Chargers quietly and efficiently drove a stake through the Hawks, 69-32.

It was a near-40 point loss after earlier defeats of 10, 20 and 30 points. The Hawks are now 1-4 and face a tough Edison team at home on Friday.

Hayfield's top seven players from last season graduated and left behind what amounted to a J.V. team. And the Hawks' inexperience has shown in the early season.

"It takes time, but there should be a little more evidence of some of the things you're trying to teach after five games," said an extremely frustrated Ron Palmer, who saw his team fail to crack double-digits in the last three quarters after trailing only 13-10 after eight minutes.

While the Chargers could have gone for a 50-point win, coach Jim Smith started rotating in his bench players when the score was 52-26 at the end of the third quarter. Even with this tactic, it looked as if it could have been a 40-point loss, but Garrick Short hit a 3-pointer with less than a minute to play to make it 67-32. Chantilly's Chris Shuping had a put-back just before the buzzer and accounted for the final score.  

Some Chantilly players, such as senior Jamie Danehower (who led all scorers with 16 points), remember the Hawks coming into their gym and knocking a 23-1 team out of the playoffs in 2009.

"My sophomore year Hayfield beat Chantilly here to end the season. So it was pretty cool (to lead the team)," said Danehower. "I watched my brother, who was on the team, in the locker room after that game. So coming out and beating them was a lot of fun."

The first quarter ended with a Hayfield 3-pointer that made it 13-10. Then Chantilly took over for good. The Chargers went on a 15-4 run over the next six minutes, highlighted by a 3-pointer from Danehower, a smooth jumper by 7-footer John Manning and a 3-point play from Danehower. None of the plays was especially noteworthy. There were no awe-inspiring dunks or primal-scream inducing blocked shots. Chantilly was just efficient on offense and its defense made Hayfield look bad. The score at halftime was 35-18.

"They're a little better than we are right now," said Palmer. "We're just making too many mistakes. That's been the way it is in all our games. We're not really finding ourselves as a team."

In the second half, Chantilly picked up where it left off.

Jake Weigand grabbed offensive rebounds and picked up easy buckets, Danehower had a steal and converted a lay-up and Manning hit another jumper from the corner. Hayfield's Ben Kim and Tyler Seelman went to the floor to grab some loose balls and dove to knock away passes, but the hole was too deep. 

The Chargers converted 14-of-20 from the line and made five 3-pointers. Four players, Danehower, Jake Weigand (13), Devin Ballam (10) and Huelskamp (10) finished in double figures.

The top scorers for the Hawks were held to single digits, aside from Grant Williams who had 10 points. Hayfield converted just 11 shots from the field (four 3-pointers) all night. The Hawks were 6-for-8 from the line.

 After the game, Palmer didn't have anything positive to say about his team's effort, but Kim said he thinks the Hawks can rebound.

"(We just have to) work hard in practice and do what the coach says," Kim said. "His philosophy works, we've just got to execute."

Chantilly heads to West Springfield (1-5), while Hayfield hosts Edison (3-1) on Friday. Both games begin at 7:30.