As fall season comes to an end, it’s time for winter sports to begin, which means basketball season is right around the corner.  

Winter tryouts/practices began on Halloween.   

Girls’ varsity basketball head coach, Kim Schmidt said, “We will have more experience coming into this season as the current seniors played some major roles for us last year. Having true game experience will help us to be more confident and be able to perform better.”

The Owls are coming off a 13-12 season last winter. The Owls will begin their season on November 21 at home against Herculaneum. 

Leading scorer Regan Daly, who averaged nearly 10 points per game, also returns. However, the Owls graduated a significant amount of impactful players, especially those with an inside presence. 

Kim Schmidt said, “Losing four seniors last year that were all post players will leave us in a different position than what we were last season. There will be a lot more minutes to fill from last year and I am looking forward to seeing who is willing to step up to the challenge.”

Seniors Maddy Mancuso, Abby Holland,  and Alexis Cox, along with junior Riley Fendler, will likely fill the void on the inside. Guards Peyton Broderick, Sophie Romano, Adrianna Mancuso, Geneva Turnbough, Madison Williams, Maggie Bunton, Kylie Alaniz and Daly should see some time in the backcourt. 

Schmidt will rely on her experienced players to lead the way and look to them to mentor some of the younger players. All players on the current roster are upperclassmen. 

Daly said, “This year, we are going to be good. With all the juniors coming up and all of the seniors that we have now, I think that we will work pretty well with each other on the court.” 

At times last season, the Owls struggled on the offensive side of the ball. 

Daly said, “Something that we would need to adjust on is our shooting and moving without the ball. We catch ourselves just waiting for the ball to come to us, when you need to keep moving.”

Schmidt agreed with that assessment. 

Schmidt said, “We need to become a more consistent scoring team. We were able to get good looks last year but were not able to finish at a high percentage. We will need to improve in this area in order to be more successful.”