High School Girls Basketball

by Steve Noll

The 2007-08 High School Girls Basketball team consisted of twenty players and managers. Throughout the season we stressed fundamentals, teamwork and the need to always play hard. My hope is that each of the girls will take what was covered during the season and continue to build on it throughout the rest of the year. This years team was again a young team but the girls showed that hard work pays off. Overall Varsity, JV and Freshmen had a combined record of 39 wins and 8 losses. Our Varsity ended the season with 18 wins and 6 losses, JV finished with 16 wins and 0 losses and Freshmen ended up 5 wins and 2 losses. Some of the highlights of the year included winning the final DVL tournament that was held at Benedictine (next year it will be at Oskaloosa), winning the Pleasant Ridge JV tournament for the 3rd year in a row, 3rd place finish in the JCN Invitational Tournament, 4th place finish in the DVL and the Horton 3A substate runner up. We also ended up with a number of girls receiving post season honors. Amelia Noll and Sara Navinskey were named to the All League team and Mallory Grand Pre and Lisa Weishaar were named All League honorable mention. No other league school had more than 2 girls receiving all league honors. Amelia and Mallory were also named to the JCN All tournament team.

The members of this year’s team are: Senior - Jessica Kearney; Juniors - Amelia Noll, Devin Gigstad, Lisa Weishaar, Haley Hoffman, and Holly Reed; Sophomores – Mallory Grand Pre, Beth Anne Brickell, Sara Navinskey, Lincoln Kingman; Freshmen- Gage Funk, Kelsey Deviney, Anna Kern, Katie Noll, Brooke Bengal, Haley Hannah, Kay Irvin, Stacey Bradshaw and our Manager Jena Eddy.

I would like to thank Coach Kramer and Coach McMillan for helping coach this year. They did an outstanding job and played a large part in our success throughout the year. I would also like to thank everyone else who helped us out, from the administration to the high school office to the bus drivers and finally to the parents who provided meals before some of the games. We really appreciate all of your help.

I would like to remind everyone that players are made in the off season and we have opportunities for them to improve their game. On June 2 and 3 there will be a Shooting Camp at the High School for boys and girls grades 5-12. Grades are based from the 2007 - 08 school year. The session for High School students will be 9:00 am to Noon and the 5th – 8th grades will be from 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm. I would encourage anyone who wants to improve their shooting to register for this camp. Forms are available in both the High School and EMS Offices. Our high school girls basketball team camp will be the week of May 26-30.

Finally, in the past two years we have had many of the girls play summer basketball and I believe this activity plays a major factor in our improvement when combined with their training during basketball season.