Cairo's Travis Hunter tries to get around a Americus-Sumter defender Tuesday night.

CAIRO — Region play has begun for Cairo’s basketball teams, but the first game of the slate didn’t go as they had hoped.

After a close opening period, Americus-Sumter pulled away for good, starting the girls with a loss to start Region 1-4A play with a 64-46 defeat Tuesday night. The boys did not fare better, falling to the Panthers with a 80-44 loss.

Demytria Robinson led the Syrupmaids in the first quarter, scoring eight points to keep her team in contention with the Panthers early. Cairo led 9-8 with 3:02 left in the first, but Americus-Sumter continued to trade blows with Cairo, eventually taking a slim 15-12 lead headed into the next period of play.

“We did some some good things, but I don’t think we ran our offense to our strengths,” Cairo girls coach Melissa McClendon said. “We played in spurts. We needed to pressure the ball more and have to execute better offensively.”

Coming out of the first, one issue that the Syrupmaids were having was with rebounding. They were able to outlast that earlier, but in the second, that problem began to catch up with them. Capitalizing, the Panthers outscored the home team 14-5 in the second, putting the Syrupmaids down 29-17 headed into the second half.

Americus-Sumter’s Timia Swanson gave Cairo headaches all game long, scoring 17 points in the first half and 30 points total.

“To beat somebody, you have to have the ball, so you have to rebound that thing,” McClendon said. “I’m proud of the fact that we held them to one shot in most instances. But [Swanson] played real well and played her game. She hurt us.”

Cairo’s rebounding issues were corrected a bit in the second half, but the Syrupmaids were never able to climb back in, as Swanson and the rest of the Panthers continued to hit the shots they got.

Robinson led the Syrupmaids with 14 points on the night, with Nyjah Greene totaling nine.

The boys started their game behind and were never close to recovering. Americus-Sumter jumped out to a 10-2 lead with four minutes left in the first, eventually entering the second with a 20-11 advantage.

The Syrupmakers were outscored 24-8 in the second quarter on the way to their sixth loss of the year.

Cairo will continue region play on Friday night, when it hosts Columbus.