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The Lady Hawks plan on fighting to the bitter end this season.

Opening the 2019-2020 campaign in Florence last Friday, coach Chadd Laws and his Hawks went down to a 47-41 loss, but, tellingly refused to go down without a fight.

Although graduation hurt Florence after last season, when the Falcons advanced all the way to the State B championship game, the Bitterroot Valley squad is still picked to be one of the best in the Western B ranks this season.

“This was a great season opener for us, a game against a quality opponent,” Laws said. “Florence plays a real physical brand of basketball and I told the girls that is something we have to be able to do, too.

“I am proud of how they responded,” he added, “they fought their way through it and played hard.”

Jody Detlaff jostled and battled her way to a team-high 15 points to lead the Hawks in Florence.

Promising to be one of the better sister acts in Montana basketball this winter, junior Megan Baxter and little sister Ellie, a freshman, were next with 11 and 10 points each, respectively.

Ellie Pardee and Faith Frields added two points each and Reagan Hanks one.

Kylie Kovatch and Kasidy Yeoman led Florence with 13 points each.

Laws said the Hawks turned to a full-court press in the fourth quarter and, at one point, got the Florence lead down to three points with about a minute and a-half left in the game.

“The press got us back in the game and it’s good to see we can play that way if we need to,” he said. “I really like this team, all we need to do is to keep getting better at what we’re doing and we will be just fine.”