Nottingham High School junior forward Haylee Kieffer made her presence felt during her team's dominant 61-27 victory over Hun on February 1.
Nottingham junior forward Haylee Kieffer, right, led the Northstars to a dominant 61-27 victory over Hun on February 1. (Michael Mancuso | For NJ.com)HAMILTON -- Nottingham High School junior forward Haylee Kieffer made her presence felt during her team's dominant 61-27 victory over Hun on February 1.
Kieffer stuffed the stats sheet during the rout, compiling a game-high 16 points to go along with 13 rebounds, demonstrating just how dominant she was that day.
According to Kieffer, she wasn't concerned with scoring points - instead, she was focused on rebounding the ball, an extremely important task that often goes unheralded.
"Me personally, I've always been a rebounder and that's just what I do," Kieffer told NJ Advance Media after the rout. "No matter what, I always want my rebounding game to be good. And I make sure in practice that (my teammate) Sara (Haas) works on her rebounding whenever I'm playing against her in practice."
Rebounding the ball wins basketball games, and it seems that Kieffer knows that.
"We are a guard-dominated team, but our bigs are really good with rebounding," said Kieffer. "We make sure if that's your position, you do your job."
Kieffer certainly did her job, and a dominant rout was the result of her hard work.
"We have to win one more game to reach our goal of getting to .500, but we want our record to go beyond that," said Kieffer. "We're trying to go on a run and this is another step in the right direction."
Nottingham coach Lauren Kelly was happy with the way her team performed against Hun.
"Our goal is to get to .500 and we were there at one point and lost it," Kelly told NJ Advance Media after the rout. "We got great inside play tonight and we've been trying to look inside a lot more and utilize our post game more because we can't always rely on our outside shooting."
Kelly was especially pleased with Kieffer's performance.
"Haylee played well tonight as our freshman came in and did a good job, and she's our future," said Kelly. "Haylee did a very nice job tonight, but I want her finishing more. I expect a lot out of her and she knows that, and she just needs to keep bringing it every game."
Rich Cuccagna may be reached at rcuccagna@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @RichCuccagna. Find The Times of Trenton on Facebook.