Think of Erika French as a basketball tailor.
The six-foot-four OSCVI Falcons centre spends most of her time causing alterations to the opposition's shots.
"Coach always says that one of the main NBA stats is alters and so I just work on that rather than actually try and hit it out of their hands," the 18-year-old Grade 12 (+1) student said Tuesday who scored a game-high 10 points as the Falcons earned a hardfought 20-16 win over the crosstown rival West Hill Raiders in Bluewater Athletic Association north division senior girls basketball play.
"I try to do that on everyone's shot. I just try to make it harder on them to shoot."
The score was low on both sides of the ball for several reasons but one of the big ones for West Hill was French.
The centre imposed her will in the defensive zone, forcing the Raiders to hurry their shots or throw up wild attempts in order to avoid a block.
"When everything breaks down, there's nothing like having that eraser at the back end to block a shot or alter a shot," said Falcons coach Lee Jacques.
"She does a great job on defence plus we focus a lot of our offence through her."
It wasn't French alone that caused West Hill to score so few points.
"I'd like to say it was all Erika and she does have some influence on shots but we missed a lot of wide-open lay ups," said Raiders coach Ken Lougheed.
"We don't shoot very well and ultimately you have to hit open shots. We play pretty good defence but we don't shoot very well and it becomes a mental thing."
The score looked like it came from a hockey game with a 2-0 OSCVI margin after the first quarter. And they eventually resembled a football game with 10-9 and 14-11 scores at the end of the half and third quarter respectively.
Jocelyn Anderson added eight points for OSCVI.
Shellee Meigs had six points for West Hill while Maddie Lougheed added five.
"Sometimes it's good defence and sometimes its bad offence and when you put them together, you get 20-16," said Jacques, who also put some of blame onto jitters at playing their cross-town rivals.
"The same shot we never miss in a game we'll miss against this team. They want to win so badly against each other that it makes it so hard."
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