ASKEWVILLE – No rust here.

Bethel Christian Academy’s girls basketball team – which hadn’t played a basketball game in two and a half weeks – showed no signs of holiday malaise when they returned to the court Tuesday night, easily dispatching Faith Christian Academy, 42-25.

Kelsie Conner led the Lady Eagles with a double-double: 19-points scored and a 12-rebound performance.  Bethel also got double-figure scoring help from Elizabeth Farmer who finished with 11 and had seven steals.

Mary Peyton Fisher led FCA in scoring with eight.

“The chemistry was back,” said assistant coach Lyndal White, filling in for ailing head coach Ashley Byrum. “That’s what we really wanted to work on.

“Our defense was great,” she added, “and Kelsie and Elizabeth were just awesome on the floor.”

Bethel sprinted out to an awesome start.

Farmer scored five of Bethel’s first seven points with the other two coming from Jessica Howerton as they took a 7-0 lead.

Other than Faith landing a three-pointer, the first quarter was all Lady Eagles as they were up, 13-3, after the first eight minutes of play.

Charitee Dunlow and Conner kept things going to begin the second quarter. Dunlow scored on a jump shot near the free-throw circle while Dunlow got a layup and a pair of foul shots to make it 19-3.

Faith scored five in a row to make it 19-8, but Bethel closed out the quarter by scoring six straight: a Kristen Adams jump shot in the corner, a post-up turnaround jump shot from Dunlow and a layup off a turnover for Conner.

Bethel led at halftime, 25-8.

Faith Christian finally got on track in the third quarter.

The Lady Patriots scored nine in a row as their triangle-and-two zone defense boxed up Bethel in the low-post and FCA began to rebound much better.

The Rocky Mount crew shrank the deficit to 25-17.

Bethel called a timeout to shake things up and it worked offensively and defensively.

Faith did not score again in the quarter and Bethel ripped off the final six points on jump shots by Farmer and Conner and a layup from Alyssa Fairless.

Leading 31-17 entering the fourth quarter, only two of Bethel’s final 11 points of the game were not scored by Conner.  She ran the floor extremely well scoring on jump shots and layups.

Farmer scored on a steal and layup and left the rest to Conner. She did not disappoint in putting away the Lady Patriots by 17.

Bethel raises its record to 8-2. After hosting Terra Ceia Christian School tonight (Thursday) they will open conference play at Gramercy on Friday night.