A career-high in points for Nick Goodfellow gave Fayetteville-Manlius a major boost, but, the intense away atmosphere and the game’s tempo got to the Hornets and they eventually lost 95-84 to Rome Free Academy.
Goodfellow’s 11 points came at a time when the Hornets were playing for pride, but, every one of those points was meaningful to him and the entire Hornet team, as it came six months after he underwent surgery to repair a torn meniscus.
But it had also been six months since the long recovery process began, which Goodfellow described as being, “hard at times.” The senior went on to say that the process really “paid off.”
He said that he had to go to “physical therapy for several months and was out of basketball for a while.” It has been obvious that he has used his injury as motivation and has refused to get discouraged even though it was a threat to his playing days.
Goodfellow, who said that this was the first time that he had surgery, claimed that the recovery process seemed to be quick and his main focus was to fully recover, no matter how long it took.
The guard noted that, “there wasn’t trouble or anything” when he was originally recovering from the injury, but, he was constantly worried about re-injuring the knee.
He was playing like his knee was never an issue and had some experience with the advantages of moving without the ball when F-M took on RFA. The senior put himself in the right position time after time and ended up knocking down three three-pointers.
Another Hornet who finished the game with three made long range shots was Timmy Zapisek. Zapisek finished the game with 17 points to complement the 20 points that Ryan Salzberg recorded and the 19-point outing from Jawaan Crouch.
However, RFA found themselves in transition a lot and had a balanced scoring attack. Their star junior, Ethan Powell, continued to be aggressive and scored 28 points while four of his teammates entered double-figure scoring themselves.
The Hornets were at a disadvantage throughout the game because they couldn’t control the speed of the game.
