The Kemmerer girls’ basketball team is off to a solid start, posting a 2-1 record at last weekend’s Bridgerland Classic, held at Mountain View and Lyman.

The Lady Rangers opened the tournament Friday against Mountain View, struggling against their former 3A rivals in a 56-27 loss.

Kemmerer turned a corner after that, beating Farson-Eden Friday 42-31, then upsetting a strong Rich County team Saturday to close out the tournament, 39-30.

“I thought we learned a lot this weekend,” said KHS head coach Phil Thatcher. “We played some good teams, and they taught us a few things. Overall, it was a good experience. Just being able to get on the court was nice.”

The Lady Rangers are on the road again this weekend at the Shoshoni Invitational, with games scheduled against Burlington, Shoshoni and Rocky Mountain.

“We want to speed up our offense a little bit,” Thatcher said. “We’re pretty good in transition — when we get one or two passes, we attack pretty well, but when we get in that half-court game, we need to run our offense with a little more fluidity, not be so mechanical. We’d like to emphasize the fast break, get a few more open layups — that will come with conditioning. Offensive fluidity and rebounding will be keys this weekend.”

Mountain View 56, Lady Rangers 27

The Lady Rangers opened the Bridgerland Classic against a buzzsaw of sorts, squaring off against host Mountain View, the No. 4 team in 3A in the WyoPreps Preseason Rankings.

Kemmerer played hard, but came up short in a 56-27 loss.

“Mountain View might be the best team we play all year,” Thatcher said. “I hate to say that so early, but boy — they were big, they were athletic. They just challenged us at every spot. I thought my girls played pretty well — we didn’t hit as many field goals as we needed to, and we didn’t hit our free throws like we should have, we were 10-of-26. It was the first game, a lot of emotion, legs might have been a little tired, because we had to play some hard defense against those girls.”

Janae Skidmore led the Lady Rangers with seven points, followed by Tyler Thatcher with five points. Ella Thatcher, Micah Carlson and Sophie Archibald chipped in four points apiece, while Natasha Martinez rounded out the scoring with one point.

“We were down 11 at half, which I was OK with,” Thatcher said. “Third quarter, Mountain View blew it open a little bit. They play about eight or nine girls, and they have some good players on that team. It was good for us, though, to have to come out and play hard and dig deep, right from the start. I thought the girls responded pretty well to a