Powder River Examiner -

By Head Coach Ashley Emmons

What a year for the Broadus junior high girls basketball team! The girls had a great season and had to compress a ton of learning into a short amount of time. As my first year back coaching basketball, I was incredibly excited to start the season and pass on my passion for the game to this young group of girls. The first two weeks of the season, many of the girls were double practicing with volleyball, and I was double practicing with cross country. It made for some long days, but the girls persevered and were able to pick up on a whole new system of offense and defense.

We had five eighth graders, five seventh graders, and 10 sixth graders out for basketball this year. With so many sixth graders, we split practices when we could, to work with all of the girls on their basketball fundamentals along with the new systems we put in place. Hopefully this will pay dividends for all of the girls in the future, and they will be ahead of the game next year when basketball season rolls around.

Our B Team was made up of all sixth graders: Gracie Gali, Gracey Bradley, Maggie Mader, Terryn Yonkee, Payton Simmons, Peyton Rumph, Tayla Randall, Alivia Landa, Kenzi Emmons, and Kayleigh Opstedahl. They were a group who showed tremendous growth throughout the year. The first year of playing on a school team and having practice every day can be a challenge at times, and these girls really did a great job of improving every day and learning how to play basketball. The B Team finished with a 4-6 record on the season.

Our A team consisted of all the seventh grade (Kendal Stanley, Maddie Zimmer, Shyla Madsen, Alix Heacock, and Becca Aye) and eighth grade (Zeason Schaffer, Mia Mader, Aspen Krantz, Emma Isaacs, and Ciara McDowell) girls. This group did a great job of stepping up to the challenge of working together and learning how to play as a team. As with any change, there are some highs and lows. Some games we executed our offense and defense better than others at the start of the year, but by our midpoint of the season, we really started to play well, and finished the year playing our very best basketball! Overall, we were fourth in conference play, so we had to start our end of the year tournament playing the fifth seed (Ekalaka), which is always a tough game. Thankfully the team stepped up to the challenge, and won the game. Our next game was against the girls from Sacred Heart, and we came out on the losing side of that contest to a really tough team. After regrouping, we played Jordan for third place in the afternoon game at our tournament. The girls really played well and were able to avenge a loss to the Lady Mustangs late in the year by beating them in the tournament to bring home the third-place trophy! The team finished the season with an overall 8 and 5 record.

I would like to thank all of the athletes, parents, and everyone else who helped out this season. We all had a great experience, and I look forward to coaching again next year. Also, a special thanks to Chelsea Holmes who volunteered her time to come help me coach the junior high girls. You were a great help and the girls really enjoyed having you at practices and games this year.