Last night, Topeka High went on the road and got handed a pair of losses in contests against Hayden High School.

In the first matchup of the night, The Lady Trojans and Wildcats kept things close in the first half, heading to the locker rooms with the Trojans only down by three, 31-28.

“We were in the game the whole time,” Ida Pieschl, senior, said.

Coming back in the second half, the Lady Wildcats took over the game, scoring the first 15 points to kick things off. This eventually lead them to a 58-46 win.

“We fought hard as a team tonight,” Pieschl said. “We had some opportunities but just couldn’t convert them.”

In the second contest of the night, the Topeka High men’s team faced off against a talented Hayden team.

High held their own though, as they went into halftime down only 27-25 and were down 39-36 going into the final quarter of play. The Trojans even lead at one point, 49-48, with about four minutes left in the final quarter, but ended up letting the game slip away in the final minutes.

“Hayden outplayed us tonight,” Patrick Denney, Topeka High’s head coach, said. “They out-hustled us, they out-worked us. They got us on the boards. You either win, or you lose, and we got beat tonight.”

Even with three players in double figures for the Trojans (Mario King – 17, Jarin Downing – 12, Machias Jackson – 11), it wasn’t enough for them to pull out a win over the Wildcats, as Hayden won, 64-57.

[Hayden was] crashing the boards and getting a lot of second chance points,” Mario King, senior, said. “Basically, they wanted it more than us tonight.”

The Trojans will play again next week at the Topeka Invitational Tournament at Topeka West, which goes on Thursday (Jan. 21) through Saturday (Jan. 23) and the Lady Trojans will be playing next Friday (Jan. 22) at Shawnee Mission NW at 7:00 p.m.