Ringwood Hawks regained top spot on the BigV State Championship Women ladder with a runaway 75-55 win over the Waverley Falcons in Saturday night’s top two clash. The win coming largely due to good production from the Hawks bench.

Playing in front of a large vocal home crowd, there was a familiar theme to the start of the game as import Amber Hegge (19 points, 12 rebounds) scored eight of Ringwood’s first 12 points to open up an early six point lead.

Fighting back as expected the visitors took a two point lead into the long break. The situation appeared to worsen when Hegge was forced to the bench after committing her fourth foul early in the third period and Waverley captain Brigitte Ardossi converted from the free throw line to extend the lead to six.

But the Hawks bench answered the call and with solid contributions from Jackie Vanderzaag (14 points) and Inez Lie (nine points), Ringwood ran off a 24-5 scoring run which broke the Falcon’s spirit. That established a double figure lead early in the last period which grew to the 20 point final margin as the Falcon’s raised the white flag by emptying their bench.

Next weekend the Hawks travel to face the Bulleen Boomers who have shown some good recent form and the hosts will look to upset the competition leaders in their quest for a finals berth