Staff photo / Preston Byers. Austintown Fitch’s Kylie Folkwein drives past Boardman’s Maddy Slevin during the Falcons’ win Wednesday in Austintown.

AUSTINTOWN — Both Austintown Fitch and Boardman entered Wednesday winless in All-American Conference play, as well as 2026, meaning something had to give when the teams met in Austintown.

Fortunately for the Falcons, their losing streak came to an end, while the Spartans’ more than month-long skid continued with a 61-48 Fitch victory Wednesday.

“I thought it was one of the better games that we’ve played all year,” Fitch head coach Dan Horacek said. “We switched it up a little bit with a 22 press coming out and went back into a 2-3 zone. I just thought we set the tone today. Games prior this season, we’ve had problems setting the tone, we’ve always been fighting back in games. Today, we set it and we stayed out front the rest of the game.”

Fitch never trailed during Wednesday’s contest, but it struggled leaving Boardman too far behind in the first quarter. A significant reason for that was the play of Spartans freshman Maddy Slevin, who scored Boardman’s first six points and eight of its 10 in the first period to keep her team within four at the end of the quarter.

Similarly, senior Fitch guard Amiya Harris proved invaluable in the second quarter, which would turn out to be the most consequential of the game. The Falcons opened the period on a 10-2 run before the Spartans managed to make their first field goal, and after Boardman momentarily got the deficit back to single digits, Harris nearly single-handedly put the game away before halftime.

In the final 2:10 of the half Wednesday, Harris scored 11 straight points, making three 3-pointers in the process, as part of a 12-2 quarter-closing run that put the Falcons ahead by 18 at the break.

“She’s a scorer, she’s a streaky scorer, and when she’s feeling it, she’s feeling it. … Can’t say enough good things about her. She did a great job,” Horacek said of Harris, who had 15 in the quarter and a team-high 19 for the night.

Coming out of the locker room, Boardman put together its best quarter of the game in the third, although most of the damage it managed to do came in the final three-and-a-half minutes after having little luck trimming the deficit early on.

Down 17 following a Kaelyn Bower basket, Jocelynn Torres kickstarted a furious run to close the quarter in which the Spartans scored 11 of the final 15 points and pulled within 10 by the end of the third.

The comeback, unfortunately for Boardman, stalled for just too long in the fourth quarter. The Spartans went the first 5:40 of the period without a field goal, making only three free throws in that time, as Fitch pulled back ahead by 15.

While they did get the deficit to eight points with a Torres 3-pointer with 56 seconds to go, signifying the first single-digit difference between the teams since Harris’s run in the second quarter, a Folkwein putback on a missed free throw with 44 seconds put the Falcons up 11 again and effectively crushed Boardman’s late momentum.

“Our girls played hard,” Boardman head coach Annie Pavlansky said. “Fitch just had a great second quarter. They were playing really hard too, but we just can’t afford to have that kind of lapse in the second quarter. But I’m really proud of how our girls fought back in the second half. It just was a little bit too late.”

Folkwein finished the night with 12 points, the second-most for Fitch, while the Spartans’ Torres had 11 and Slevin, who scored 15 in the second half, tallied a game-high 25 in total.

With Wednesday’s loss, Boardman, which hosts Warren G. Harding on Saturday, slipped to 2-12 on the season and 0-2 in conference play. The last time the Spartans won a game was Dec. 10 at Cardinal Mooney. They have lost eight since then.

“Credit to our girls truly; they have really shown their mental toughness,” Pavlansky said. “They come ready to work every day in practice, and they have been learning from their mistakes. It’s just been a little bit too little, too late as far as these last handful of games go, but really credit to our girls, credit to our coaches. … Our girls want it. They’re right there.”

Fitch (5-9, 1-2 in AAC) snapped a three-game losing streak and picked up its first win of the calendar year and league slate vs. Boardman. The Falcons are set to host 2-11 Howland on Saturday.