After losing their entire starting lineup, members of the girls’ varsity basketball team weren’t too optimistic about their upcoming season.
Last year’s team boasted MCAL Player of the Year Ariella Rosenthal, who currently plays for Vassar College, Chace Schornstein, who was named to the MCAL First Team, and sophomore point guard Jaiana Harris, who cannot play this year due to a torn ACL.
However, the team has a 5-4 record in league play as of press time. According to senior co-captain Danielle McCauley, the season is going much better than she expected and much of the team’s success stems from their speed.
“We’re a really fast team,” McCauley said. “We’re really good at pushing the ball, fast breaks, taking advantages of other teams being slow. We try to work off of fast breaks, just getting the ball and going. We’re most successful when we’re building off other team’s lack of being able to get back. We have a really strong defense, too.”
Co-captain Lauren Watkins, a junior who has played on varsity since her freshman year, added that there is no one standout player on this year’s team.
“I would say it’s completely different [from last year], not in a bad way, but just in the way we play,” Watkins said. “Last year, it was a couple people who were our main scorers, but this year if you look at our stats, there’s no top scorer. Everyone across the board gets a couple points here and there. It’s a lot more of a team effort, which I think is really important.”
While last year’s team was comprised of mostly upperclassmen, this year the team has a wide age range. According to McCauley and Watkins, sophomores Heidi Roenisch and Nicki Yang have stepped up and contributed to the team’s success thus far.
“A lot of the newcomers have been around us a lot, and they also aren’t too shy to tell us what we’re doing wrong. So we’re all just working off of each other and giving each other input,” Watkins said.
According to Watkins, the team chemistry has changed because none of this year’s players played together last year — even the returners haven’t had many game-like situations together.
Additionally, the league as a whole has also changed drastically. Most teams lost a lot of seniors, including last years’ league champions Justin-Siena.
According to senior co-captain Bailey Ferguson, all of the MCAL games thus far have been very close in score, and the league as a whole is very close in skill level.
“When it comes down to who wins MCALs this season, it’s almost anyone’s game. You just have to work hard and show up like you want to win,” McCauley said.
