The visiting Tyee girls basketball team started tough, but Highline overcame that toughness with gritty, smart play of their own, coming back to win going away against the visiting Totems Friday.

The Totems started this season on fire, beating Chief Sealth, 47-44, and then Sammamish, 40-36, and this game would start on that same winning note as the Totems built a 7-2 lead on the Pirates only to have it be 7-6 by the end of the first quarter.

Arenesha Smith, a sophomore point guard for the Totems, scored all seven of her team’s points early on.

She was frustrated with her team’s performance in the second quarter, which copied efforts against Sammamish and Chief Sealth.

“We have not been strong in the second quarter,” said Smith, whose series of acrobatic moves to the hoop and a steal, or two, thrown in for good measure was fun to watch early.

But the second quarters for the Totems this season -- not just this game against the Pirates -- had not been fun to watch for fans, and certainly that would go over to the Totems’ players as well. After being ahead 13-3 after the first quarter against Chief Sealth in a Dec. 1 played game, the Totems were outscored, 19-12, in the second quarter. The Totems did go on to win but that second quarter made things tough on them. Then, against Sammamish, the Totems led, 12-3, after the first quarter but were outscored, 12-1, in the second quarter, before going on to win that game, too.

“We need to come back strong in the second quarter,” said Smith, who scored 19 points to lead her team against Chief Sealth and 11 against Sammamish in that Dec. 3 game.

Smith put things in perspective of how the Pirates then went on a 9-0 run in the second quarter to take a 15-7 lead into halftime that Tyee would not recover from, 27-10, after the third quarter.

“We are having fun. We are just a young team and we are one of the smaller teams in the Seamount,” said Smith, who led her team in this game with 11 points.

Leading the Pirates was senior captain Sofia Locklear with 11, as she and Samantha Erben, another senior captain, and Alana Lopez, who scored the bulk of her team’s points in the first quarter with four, in different quarters, carried their team pretty well.

Lopez helped the Pirates stay close in the first quarter before Locklear took that duty in the second, scoring six points. Again, Smith and the Totems were shut out of scoring in the second quarter.

“She (Smith) was their biggest offensive threat,” said Gary. “We keyed on her. We were able to get in front of her. Defense was good tonight and the same Tuesday (against Sammamish). The girls have done a good job being scrappy, moving their feet..”

The Pirates were outscored 6-2 against Sammamish, going back to their way of winning that one, and, then they did the flip of what the Totems offense does in the second quarter. The Pirates went on a 15-6 run in the second quarter to salt that game all but away.

So, after Lopez helped the Pirates stay close early, it was Locklear’s six in the second buoying things. And, then, as the Pirates outscored the Totems, 13-3, in the third quarter, it was Erben’s four leading the way, as well as an Alyssa Palermo three-pointer.