Laurel’s Nicole Wade may have been the most important player on the court last night.

The 5-foot sophomore guard, pressed into duty when Lady Spartans point guards Brooke Dicks and Kristin Dicks got into foul trouble, helped her teammates to a 58-42 WPIAL Section 2-AA win over visiting Riverside.

Laurel (4-2, 8-5) jumped out to a 17-7 first quarter lead and was able to gradually extended it over the final three quarters.

“Thank heavens, we had the lead,” Lady Spartans coach Jessica Shevitz said. “Brooke and Kristin got in foul trouble and we had to play a significant portion of the game without my starting point guards. Nicole Wade is a little light on experience. She’s a sophomore and had to sit out last year with an injury. I had to ask her play some big minutes for us. She came out and did what I needed her to do. We just needed her to help us maintain that lead and that’s what she did. I was very proud of her tonight.”

Reserves Maddison Deinert and Aleyce Bell also played key roles in the victory. Deinert scored a season-high seven points in the victory.

“I don’t know if we could’ve won this game without our bench,” Shevitz said. “We had some “quiet” players step up. Maddie Deinert is the first player off my bench and she’s kind of quiet normally, but she scored a little above her average, which was nice.”

Ellen Shaffer and Jessica Conrad each posted double-doubles with Shaffer’s 23 points, 15 rebounds and four blocks leading the way. Conrad tacked on 11 points and 10 boards. Rachael Baker contributed seven points and five assists.

“If you look at the box score, you see we had a big lead at halftime, but there were some things that I wasn’t happy with,” Shevitz said. “I was asking a lot out of them and they responded. I needed people to step up. The leadership of Jess, Ellen and Rachael Baker was just wonderful.”

Shevitz was worried how her team would respond in the aftermath of a heartbreaking 53-52 loss to Section 2 rival Neshannock on Monday.

“I was worried at first going into practice on Tuesday,” she said. “I knew how I felt. I just didn’t know how they felt, but they were ready to go. They may have handled it better than I did. They were ready to go and came in Tuesday with a positive attitude.

“We needed this. I didn’t think our energy level was as high as Monday, but that’s to be expected. We needed this win and we got this win.”