The final stretch of the 2018-2019 high school basketball season is fast approaching. Even with ten regular season games remaining on their schedule, the Windsor varsity girls basketball team has managed to pull out more wins than they did last season.

The team’s current 5-9 mark may not be eye-popping, but certainly gives reason to be excited. Compared to last year in which they ended up at 3-19, nearly every statistical category has seen improvement this season

The Owls have improved their average scoring output from 27 per last season to now 37 points per contest this season. The girls have also been a bit stronger defensively, allowing five fewer points per game this season.

“The underclassmen come to practice to compete. They bring energy, which also helps bring out the best in our seniors,” Owls head coach Kim Schmidt said of the big jump in the team’s competitiveness.

The sophomores account for 17 of the team’s 37 point per game average.

“It’s a pretty cool thing to be able to play with the upperclassmen and to be able to start,” sophomore Piper Montgomery said.

Even with the bright spots that have come from some of the younger players on the team, there remains one hole in the team that Schmidt hopes the girls can fix in order to have a strong finish to the season.

“Our biggest need for improvement is being able to defend. We know we’re not going to score a lot each night, so we need to get back to where our defense was at the beginning of the year,” Schmidt said.

The opinions of the players don’t seem to differ from that of their coach either.

“We started out pretty good with our defense, and then we just kind of hit a rough patch for a while,” Montgomery said.

The defensive struggles have been particularly evident in the last three games in which the girls have surrendered an average of 58 points per game. It is also notable that when the Owls allow their opponents to score fewer than 50 points, they have won five of those eight matchups.

The girls also hope to be able to receive a boost from their senior group in their final stretch of regular season games. These last moments for athletes seem to have a way of pulling out the best in players.

Senior Keri Voegtle said, “Senior year has impacted me by just putting everything I’ve got onto the court, and trying to leave the court without saying ‘I could have done this or I should have done that’. I try to make the most out of every game I can before I don’t have the chance to play again.”

The Owls next play at 10:30 am on Saturday against Lift For Life in the Affton Tournament.