Waukon girls basketball team returns three letterwinners for 2015-2016 season

A trio of senior letterwinners returns to lead the Waukon girls basketball team into its 2015-2016 season under second-year head coach Andy Sires. That trio helped last season’s squad to a 7-15 season during Coach Sires’ first season at the girls basketball helm, hoping to improve on both that overall mark and a 4-8 mark in Northeast Iowa Conference play that placed the Indians fifth in the final seven-team standings.
That senior trifecta includes Nicole Behrend, the lone returnee consistently in the starting line-up last season as a junior and the Tribe’s leading scorer from last season with an average of just over 10 points per game. Joining in that veteran trio are Madison Snitker and Bethany Stock, with fellow seniors Emily Hammel and Leah Riese rounding out this season’s list of upperclassmen leaders.
“These three will be expected to lead us; they return with the most experience,” Coach Sires said. “Nicole is our only returning starter and was our leading scorer last season. Madison gave us some good quality minutes last year, and Bethany has done a good job of being a team leader, she understands the game pretty well.”
That trio leads an overall program of 26 young ladies competing on the high school hardcourt for the Indians, more than half of that group coming from this year’s freshman class of 14 current players, some of whom will likely be looked to for contributions at the varsity level this season. Four juniors and just three sophomores round out that overall program roster, with some of this year’s juniors also offering a bit of varsity assistance last season.
“Our juniors played really well during our summer workouts,” Coach Sires said. “We were really satisfied with our off-season workouts.”
It is the meshing of all four of those grade levels in off-season and early-season workouts that has been one of the most pleasant surprises of the young 2015-2016 campaign for Coach Sires. “We have a lot of younger kids, and our older kids have done a nice job of including them in every aspect of the team,” he shared. “That acceptance and the team chemistry we’ve been seeing are going to be what we need in order to be successful.”
Graduation of four seniors from last season’s starting line-up leaves some experienced shoes to fill and took with it a great deal of statistical leadership from last season’s squad. Graduated seniors Thea Meyer, Allie Schwartz and Jackie Welch left with the top-two totals in some combination in nearly every statistical category, with Welch and Schwartz each being bestowed the Tribe’s only All-Conference honorings from last season.
It is that high level of graduation loss and the resulting lack of returning varsity experience that Coach Sires sees as one of this season’s greatest challenges. “We have a lot of inexperience at the varsity level, returning just one starter,” he noted. “And we’re not a great outside shooting team, overall, but that’s something we’ve been trying to improve. So, who will score for us is one of the unknown variables right now.”
With proven consistent scoring not all that evident at this point in the scene, Coach Sires is hoping to make the other half of the game, the defensive aspect, more of a priority this season. “If we play good defense, we should be able to compete with anybody,” he said. “Our number-one goal is to hold other teams to less than 40 points. I can’t stress enough how important it is to be able to stop other teams with defense and rebounding. If we don’t play good defense, it won’t be easy for us to keep up with other teams, but we’ve got some pretty good quickness that should really help us be a better defensive team this season.”
Teaming up with that quickness is one of the taller overall rosters the Indians have experienced, especially in recent years. “We have a little size, with four girls who are 6’0” or taller,” Sires said. “Three of them are freshmen, so we’ll see how that works out for us as they gain more experience.”
In addition to that more specific goal of holding opposing teams to under 40 points per game is the broader goal of finishing within the top half of the seven-team Northeast Iowa Conference (NEIC). Coach Sires sees last season’s NEIC champion and runner-up, Waverly-Shell Rock and Crestwood, as this season’s favorites as well, both of those teams playing to State Tournament qualification last season and returning considerable contributors to that success.
The Indians will begin their quest to compete with those top NEIC contenders, along with a number of other high-level competing teams, later this week when they open their 2015-2016 campaign at home against intra-county foe Kee this Friday, November 20. After a November 24 road game at South Winneshiek, the basketball Tribe will also open its Northeast Iowa Conference season at home December 1 against New Hampton.