Incoming Talent Leads Girls' Basketball to Winning Season

Record: 13-10 After a tough 4-17 season last year,Exeter’s girls’ varsity basketball reboundedincredibly this season. With the help of somekey new players to the team, the girls tripledlast year’s win total, nishing the season 13-10.Although at the beginning of the year the teamhad dif culty nding the win column, the girlsmanaged to pull themselves together, going onan impressive eight-game winning streak andending their season with a thrilling overtimevictory at home over Andover. After such a remarkableturn-around, the girls hope to continueto improve in the seasons to come.There were signi cant holes to ll in theteam at the start of the season. The team graduatedtwo co-captains from the previous season,Sylvia Okafor ‘12 and Catherine Closmore ‘12,who had led the team and had been responsiblefor the majority of Big Red’s point production.However, with the addition of three new starters,upper co-captain Nicole Heavirland, upperYvonne Dean-Bailey and prep Peace Kabari,the girls had a fresh new lineup and were raringto compete.Returning players were con dent that thesquad’s new talent would be bene cial to theteam. “We had three new starters and that helpeda lot,” lower and returning starter CourtneyHenrich said.Head coach Johnny Grif th agreed. “Weadded three top-notch players, and they reallyhelped elevate our level of play,” he said. “Thethree did not just bring their talent to the team.They also have great basketball I.Q.s and providegreat leadership to the team.”In particular, the new three did a great jobof learning and utilizing Grif th’s new offense.“All three girls came and plugged right in,”Grif th continued. “We ran a new offense, soeveryone was pretty much on the same levelin terms of past years’ experience, but the girlsreally helped to set the pace.”As the team began to t together earlyin the season, they did face some struggles.Through their rst nine, the girls went 3-6. Itwas progress from the season before, but everyoneknew they had more in them. Finally,after a 42-28 home win against Deer eld, thegirls got on a roll.In the very next game after Deer eld, thegirls showed no signs of letting up, crushingChoate in a 60-42 home victory. Heavirland waslights out in the game, nishing with 32 points.With the hot hand of one of the team’s captains,the girls were on re. Even with Kabari out forthree of eight games during the streak, the girlscould not be stopped.Despite dropping a couple games towardthe end of their schedule, Big Red still managedto nish strong. Following a 19-point rout ofHolderness, the girls banded together to takea talented Andover team into overtime. Exeterdominated in these nal few minutes, nishingwith a 61-54 win.Although it appeared that their overtimetriumph against Andover at Winter E/a wouldbe enough to make the playoffs, the team wascrushed to hear that they had just missed outon the last spot in the playoffs. Instead, in atiebreaker, BB&N went on to the playoffs asthe eighth seed.One thing that the girls struggled with overthe year was facing teams with size. Big Redlacked the size of the dominant teams in theirleague, possessing no true “big-man” on theroster. “Size matters in basketball, and teamsthat outsized us signi cantly gave us trouble,”Grif th said. “Our goal was to turn the game intoa track meet, so to speak, and I didn’t feel likewe did that as well as we might have.”Henrich admitted that in the beginning ofthe season, the team didn’t place focus on thepaint area. “[We thought,] ‘It’s okay, we’ll bene. We’ll make our shots; we don’t really needrebounders.’ But then, as the season progressed,we started thinking, ‘We could use some bigsright now.’”With their lack of size, the team had troublerebounding and stopping other teams fromdominating the paint. Exeter worked day in andday out to address the issue, and they began tond ways to stop big men, even without bigsof their own to protect the paint. Throughoutthe course of the season, the girls continued topractice boxing out, which limited other teamsfrom getting second-chance point opportunities.Despite often facing much bigger girls, afew of Big Red’s players fearlessly stepped up.In particular, both Henrich and Heavirland notedupper Susannah Gray’s importance to the team.“I want to give credit to Susannah Gray, whois only 5’10” or maybe 5’11” on a good day,”Henrich said. “She is not really a post body orpost type, but she does give us some height atthe center position.”Despite Gray being shorter than many ofthe other girls she had to defend, Gray used herathleticism to defend girls that no one else onthe team could. Like Gray, Kabari also used herextreme athleticism to play an important rolerebounding on both ends of the oor.This year, the girls showed great improvementon the court, but they were great off thecourt too. “We had the girls over to our house almostevery weekend, and their getting a chanceto spend so much time together off the courtwas, I think, crucial to our building chemistryand having such a successful season,” Grif thsaid. “It was a ton of fun, and I think it allowsyou to build the relationship with the playerswhen they know you care about them as peopleand are going to invest in them off the court anddon’t just think of them as players.”Despite their hope for nding the size theylacked this season, the girls’ team will not begetting any recruits next year. However, the girlsstill look at next season optimistically. They willonly be losing three seniors next year. Althoughone is starter and co-captain Gabii Wozniak, theteam is con dent that they can ll the positionand hope to make a run at the playoffs. “I thinkthe playoffs are very reachable now that we’rea year in and we’ll have pretty much the sameteam because we graduated just three players,”Heavirland said.With an abundance of experienced andsavvy players familiar with Grif th’s system,the girls hope that next year they’ll move pasttheir unfortunate shortcoming and take the teaminto the playoffs.