The Lady Spartans secured their first road win over Beaver Falls in four years with the Section 2-AA victory.

Laurel (1-0, 3-0) grabbed a 15-9 lead after the first quarter and went into the locker room with a 32-18 lead before outscoring Beaver Falls (0-1, 0-4) 22-15 in the second half.

“It was very nice to get that win,” Laurel coach Jessica Shevitz said. “It’s a great win and I don’t want to take anything away from them, but we didn’t play our best game. We still have room to improve. That should be reassuring to me to go down there and win by 21. We definitely have room to get better.

“We can play better. We haven’t played our best game and I’ll be excited to see it.”

The Lady Spartans had 25 turnovers and sent Beaver Falls to the free throw line 27 times.

“The nice thing with a veteran team is they know when they’ve made a mistake and how to fix it,” Shevitz said. “We don’t want to be playing our best basketball right now. We want to be playing our best in mid-January. If we’re playing our best in the heart of the season, we’ll be set.”

The win was Laurel’s third straight.

“I don’t know if we won three games in a row last year,” Shevitz said. “I’m not seeing any overconfidence in them right now. We’re approaching it one game at a time. We’re just trying to get better and better.”

Brooke Dicks led the Lady Spartans with a 14-point, 10-rebound double-double, while Rachael Baker tacked on 14 points and five steals. Jessica Conrad and Ellen Shaffer totaled seven points and nine rebounds each.

“Ellen just didn’t have it tonight,” Shevitz said. “She’s been averaging over 20 a game. They keyed on her tonight and other people stepped up. That’s nice to know. The rebounding was good, too. That’s something we had struggled with last year. Everybody is boxing out, so that’s good.”