(Griswold) ‘Excited’ is the word that keeps popping up when talking to Griswold girls basketball coach Chris Hamilton about the upcoming season.
Hamilton says, “I think the girls are really excited, I’m definitely excited. We are just ready to finally play some basketball after the summer was cut short because of COVID. I think everyone has been waiting for this and we have a good group of seniors and so I can’t wait for the season to begin.”
After a preseason injury to Jocelyn Amos last year the team was especially young. Which means they bring pretty much all of their productivity back. “We return Hope Ogg as a senior, our point guard. We’ve got our posts Josie Mundorf and Kalainee Teaney. Mikala Pelzer is back, Ashlyn Brownlee is a senior that didn’t go out last year, but is going to go out this year. McKenna Wiechman is our leading scorer, she’ll be back. It just goes on and on. We have so many returners. It’s exciting to have essentially almost your whole team back.”
Coach Hamilton points out this amount of returning experience should allow the team to be a ahead of schedule when it comes to getting ready for this season. “We struggled with pressure, hopefully we’ve grown and gotten a little better. Our shooting has definitely improved. I think we’ll be a lot better off.”
There’s still plenty of room for growth. Coach Hamilton identifies some of those areas. “Pace of play. I’d like to get them as conditioned as possible as fast as possible. Our next biggest goal is to learn to break the press well. The teams that press us we struggle with and the teams that lay back the pressure we can be in any game.”
Hamilton says they have a deep team and he expects to play nine or ten girls most games. He likes the potential shown from the freshman class, but says it remains to be seen if any of them will be ready to contribute at the varsity level right away.
