Wednesday, January 18, 2023
Ondus Reaches 1000 Points
On January 17, the Gowanda Varsity boys basketball team hosted 1st Place Randolph. Despite a valiant effort, Gowanda fell short in the game while John Ondus crossed the 1,000-point milestone.
The 1st quarter started out close with the teams tied at 5 and Gowanda taking a 1-point lead at 16-15 and 18-17. From there, Randolph closed out the period with a 7-point burst taking the score to 18-24. After scoring four points early in the 2nd period, the Gowanda offense went dormant. The biggest factor in that was a string of turnovers. It was not until the very end of the period that John Ondus scored Gowanda’s 6th point of the quarter. Meanwhile, Randolph had built up a 39-24 advantage.
Gowanda came out in the 3rd quarter with their best effort of the game scoring twenty points. They still lost ground with Randolph adding twenty-four to their score at the same time. With the score standing at 63-46 and Randolph in control, things slowed down for both teams in the final quarter. Randolph still won the period, but only by a 13-11 margin.
Still, there was one major Gowanda highlight in that last quarter. With 7:22 left in the game, John Ondus was at the foul line. He hit both of a pair of foul shots taking him to the 1,000-point mark in his career. The game was briefly stopped while he was given a banner indicating that accomplishment and a few photos were taken. Gowanda coach, Lucas Brawdy, was quoted as saying “It’s a big accomplishment” noting that Ondus was “one of three people at Gowanda to get 1,000 points” in their career.
Ondus landed a trio of 3-point baskets on the night on the way to lead Gowanda scoring with 19 points. Two players also reached double-digits for Gowanda. They were Quentin Centner (12 points) and Blake Herman (10 points). Herman had two 3-pointers in the game while Centner had one. All of those came in the 1st quarter. Also scoring for Gowanda, with eight points each, were Tyler Smith and Alex Pachucinski.
In other sports news, the Eden boys swimming team was at Iroquois on the 17th. While the team lost the meet 35-63, the Gowanda members of the team, Christian Merrill and Hayden Kaus, did well.
Merrill and Patrick Schmitz were the top two Eden swimmers coming in tied for 6th overall individually with a pair of silver finishes each. For Christian Merrill, those came in the 200M Individual Medley (2:32.96) and the 100M Backstroke (1:06.12) In the backstroke event the 1st Place time was 1:04.82, just 1.30 seconds better than Merrill’s time.
Right behind in the individual results was Hayden Kaus. He finished in 8th Place with a silver and a bronze. The 2nd Place finish came in the 200M Freestyle (2:11.64) and 3rd Place came in the 100M Butterfly (1:16.05).
The Eden team only had one relay team come in with a win at the meet, but both Merrill and Kaus were on that team. Along with Brayden Timblin and Patrick Schmitz, Eden took gold in the 400M Freestyle Relay in 3:55.88.