With six seconds remaining in the game, the Sandy Springs Friends School starting center makes a free throw. What had been a seven-plus point advantage with five minutes remaining, became a one-point lead for the CESJDS girls varsity basketball team. Six seconds and two fouls later, the Lions had defeated the Sandy Spring Beests with a score of 49-48.

The Lions were successful on Tuesday in bouncing back from a disappointing loss against the Spencerville Hornets.

“[We] really worked hard on a lot of skills that we didn’t do well last game,” freshman Avital Friedman said.

By the end of the first quarter, the score was 16-14. With a combined nine points, Friedman and sophomore Abby Alter led the Lions in scoring. Halfway through the quarter, with the  Lions up by one point, coach and Interim Athletic Director Becky Silberman called a timeout to regroup. After the timeout, however, the team suffered, only scoring six more points in the quarter, while giving up nine.

By halftime, the Lion’s had tied the score at 23. That took a lot of effort on the part of the Lions, who were down by six halfway through the second quarter. Only three people scored for the Lions in the quarter: Friedman, junior Hailey Weiss and senior Devira Friedman.

The Friedman sisters combined for 27 points, with Avital scoring 20.

15 seconds into the second half, the Lions regained the lead on Avital’s first two points of the half, in which she scored 13. The Lions’ lead started to get to the players of Sandy Springs throughout the third quarter as players and parents alike were getting upset with each other.

However, after this, the game went back to being tied. Throughout the third quarter, the lead changed hands five more times, and Coach Silberman danced once, after a travel from Avital.

“I was showing what Avital did,” Silberman said of her dance after Avital traveled with the ball near the corner. “I dance better than that.”

As seen, the Lions do not forget to have fun. “All you can do is laugh about it,” Avital said.

By the end of the third quarter, the Beests had a one-point lead. That didn’t last long. The lead changed four times throughout the fourth quarter, with the Lions clinging to a three-point lead with less than 10 seconds left.

At this point, the fans were all apprehensive, while Silberman says she was not. She does not get nervous.

With the clock winding down, Silberman told her players to relax and stop charging aggressively. They did not listen and played very aggressively, which almost ended up costing them the game.

According to Silberman, you can either do the right thing or the wrong thing, and the Lions did the wrong thing, but still pulled out a 49-48 win, improving their record to 1-1.