Staff photo / Brian Yauger Fitch’s Sam Severn (14) dribbles past a Cardinal Mooney defender during the Falcons’ win on Saturday in Austintown. Severn finished with 11 points.

AUSTINTOWN — After Fitch’s huge season-opening win over Lakeside, the Falcons hit a rough stretch. A 1-0 start quickly turned to a 1-5 record as Fitch went up against some of the top teams in northeast Ohio.

While not panicking, the Falcons needed a solid win to bolster their confidence going forward.

On Saturday, they got just that.

The Fitch defense put the padlocks on and the Falcons were scoring from end-to-end of their bench in a 56-24 victory over Cardinal Mooney.

First-year coach Natalie Lynn preached a lot about unity and sticking together through tough times this week. They’re hoping this win is the turning point this group needs.

“We had a little rough patch there after our first game,” Lynn said. “We had a long stretch of really good teams and we definitely fell a little into a rut because of all of that. We really needed this today to get out of that and get out of our own heads.”

Nine total players registered points for Fitch on Saturday, which is a win in itself. Getting everyone involved was important for the team’s overall confidence.

Zayda Creque led the team with 12 points. Samantha Severn came off the bench to add 11.

“It’s huge for confidence, especially getting into our whole entire bench,” Lynn said. “Nearly everybody scored today and that’s what we really needed — to just see that ball go in — and to break a press breaker again is really helpful.”

The schedule won’t be getting any easier for the Falcons either. As the games continue on, learning to take that punch from another team and respond with one of your own is an important lesson Fitch will be learning.

“You can’t just be focused on yourself and you have to overcome the adversity when you may not be winning right off the bat,” Lynn said. “We have to realize that that’s okay, you can still come back from it. Right now, we get scared almost and think that we’re already done. It’s just learning that because the score might show that we’re down by five, we can still come back.”

In her first year guiding the Falcons, Lynn has had high hopes of building the program up. This season, that’s the top goal. They’re also looking for that signature win to really prove that they’re here and are capable of big things.

“Our main goal is to just keep developing the program. We’ve got a lot of young girls on the team still, so keep developing them so that we can be where we need to be in the coming years,” Lynn said. “We haven’t had that team yet that nobody thinks we can beat, that we come out and beat. We’ve yet to do that. To be able to beat that team that we don’t stand a chance against is our goal.”

The Falcons (2-5) close out the 2022 portion of their schedule on the 29th, when they take on Hilliard Davidson. During the opening week of the new year, Fitch takes on Howland, Harding and Liberty.

Mooney falls to 4-5 on the season. They were led by Olivia Rouser who scored 10. So far this season, Mooney has been building around its defense. As they look to bounce back and escape a two-game skid on Wednesday against Youngstown East, coach Dom Diorio has cited defense as the key to getting back in the win column.

“We’ve been struggling to put the ball in the hoop so we build everything off the defense,” Diorio said. “We’ve got to get better on defense, and we weren’t really good today, but we’re trying some different things and there’s some glimpses there. We’ve just got to put it together as a defense. That’s where it’s got to start.”