The Dover-Eyota girls basketball team lost more than its first game of the season last Friday against visiting Southland. The Eagles also lost their best all-around player for the season.
D-E junior guard Brandi Blattner sustained a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and menicus in the first few minutes of the Eagles' 75-69 loss to the Rebels. It was D-E's first loss after an 11-0 start. D-E is now 6-1 in the Three Rivers Conference North Division and shares the lead with Plainview-Elgin-Millville.
D-E head coach Brian Harris said that Blattner is meeting with a surgeon in the next few weeks, and she will most likely be out of sports for at least nine months.
Harris noted that there was no contact with another player; she just went to cut and her knee buckled.
"She is taking it pretty hard right now," Harris said Friday. "She hopefully will return for most of volleyball next year and then basketball and track. She has been a tremendous three sport star for D-E."
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Blattner, the subject of the P-B's H.S. Profile feature the day before her injury, was leading D-E in virtually every statistical way, with 16 points, 9.5 rebounds, 5.7 steals and 4.9 assists each night out. Harris said he has never had a player do that before in his 10 seasons as coach. Megan Hintz is also scoring 16 points for the Eagles.
"It's a tough loss for our team, but we will regroup and be more than competitive the rest of the way," Harris said. "We have to change roles on the team a little and adjust to playing without her."
