The Cumberland Valley Christian girls basketball team will set out this weekend to accomplish something the Blazers haven’t done in a while.

The Blazers are the top seed in the Mason-Dixon Christian Conference tournament and will be trying to bring home the team’s first MDCC championship since 2008. That year, star player Miranda Payne was wrapping up a career that left her as the all-time leading scorer in the Franklin/Fulton County area.

The Blazers play fourth-seeded Faith Christian in the league semifinals Friday afternoon at 4:30 at Shalom Christian Academy. If they win, they will face either second-seeded Broadfording or third-seeded Grace Academy at 5 p.m. Saturday at Mercersburg Academy in the championship game.

The Blazers’ road to the No. 1 seed came with a few challenges along the way. One of the first was rebounding from a season that saw them drop two games in the semifinals and consolation game of last year’s league tournament. Another was instilling confidence in a team that had ability but hadn’t always produced success.

“Over the year the girls have really bought into our vision and started believing in themselves, their abilities and trusting even more in their teammates,” said first-year coach Elston Teal.

The Blazers take a 16-4 record into the semifinals. After starting 2-2, they have lost only twice since early December. One loss was against Bishop Walsh, which sent basically an AAU team onto the court. The other was a double-overtime loss at Grace in a game in which two starters fouled out and another was injured early in the fourth period.

Two of the biggest wins of the season were a 30-29 nail-biter at defending league champion Broadfording and a 44-33 victory against Broadfording last week that sealed the top seed.

“It was a very rewarding moment when we not only achieved the goal that we set at the beginning of the season of having a higher seed for the playoffs but ended up locking down the No. 1 seed, which hasn’t happened for the Lady Blazers in a long time,” Teal said.

One other gut-check came in January at Heritage, a team the Blazers were supposed to handle easily but found themselves trailing in the third quarter. A late surge propelled the Blazers to a 31-22 victory.

“We’ve had a few games that were extremely close at the end of regulation or even in OT,” Teal said. “And those are the moments when you find out where your team’s growth is. Instead of faltering, they dug deep and pushed themselves even harder through the adversity of fatigue, injuries and doubt. They have proven time and time again that they put our team’s values and principles before self.”

All of this has all happened under difficult circumstances. The Blazers have not played a true home game all year because their gym is being refurbished, and the completion time, which was originally scheduled for December, has kept getting pushed back.

But no matter. The Blazers have persevered.

And they still are a young team, with only one senior and one junior. Leading scorer Addison Teal is a sophomore, and she is averaging 22.7 points a game in addition to doing a great deal of the team’s ballhandling.

Senior Reagan Witmer, who has piled up significant playing time in each of her four varsity years, gives the Blazers experience and a defensive/rebounding force inside. The other starters are junior Peyton Bricker and freshmen Cecelia Hott and Molly Decker. They have grown into dependable complements to Teal and Witmer.

Top subs are sophomore Olivia Coccagna and freshman Brielle Gleason, who have supplied valuable minutes off the bench. Eighth-graders Aubrey Locke, DeLaura Sloan and Tori Smith have also contributed.

“We knew that the team was willing to work hard and that each player wanted to do their best for the team,” said Teal, whose assistant coaches are Brad Coccagna and Danielle Sanders. “With that mindset we made it our goal to be a higher seed going into the playoffs than the Blazers have reached in previous years.”

And now, they’d like to cap it with a championship.