A difficult 2018-19 season came to a conclusion Monday night for the seventh-seeded Kenston Forest School varsity girls basketball team with a 55-28 road loss to No. 2 Brunswick Academy in the first round of the Virginia Colonial Conference tournament.

“We have played them in the season better than what we did yesterday, so we did not play very well,” Lady Kavaliers Head Coach Jannon Coley said Tuesday. “… Offensively, we wouldn’t drive. We just would not take the ball inside very much, and we didn’t box out like we should. Those are probably two of the main things that hurt us.”

Kenston Forest finished the season with an overall record of 2-22.

“It was kind of a rebuilding year,” Coley said. “We just didn’t have everything we needed.”

However, she noted there were spurts where the team worked together well.

The squad was comprised of only nine players, with two of those nine being available for only two quarters per game because they also played for the junior varsity team and consequently had to abide by a playing-time restriction.

This already small roster was narrowed further by sickness in the last couple of weeks, making the Lady Kavs’ journey even more difficult.

There were highlights to the season, though, and one of the foremost was found in a Jan. 18 home game against archrival Brunswick Academy.

“When Brunswick Academy came here and it was our Senior Night, (the Lady Kavs) played probably one of the best games that I have ever seen,” Coley said. “Even though it was a loss for us, we played very well …”

Kenston Forest tied its season-high in points with 40 in that game, falling 56-40.

The coach also recalled the Lady Kavaliers playing particularly well early in the season, highlighted by a 37-29 road win over Temple Christian School on Nov. 29.

Graduation will remove three players from Kenston Forest’s roster next season — Macie Coley, Emily Hawthorne and Charlotte Walker.

There is good reason to be optimistic about the 2019-20 Lady Kavs, though. Coley said much of the group that gained experience together on the junior varsity squad will be reunited on varsity, creating a team that should jell with greater ease as a result.