An experienced crop of juniors on the Clarke girls basketball team is poised to lead the way for the Indians basketball program this winter.
Two important seniors in Vanessa Bakley and Sydnee Redman departed the program, and now the Indians get to go full junior throttle in year one with Christa Subbert as head girls basketball coach.
“Our junior class is going to be our main strength this season,” Subbert said. “They have the most varsity experience and will be the leaders of this team.”
“Both (seniors) were very aggressive and worked really hard,” Subbert said. “We will miss the aggressiveness and leadership qualities they brought to our team last year.”
Back into the fold are the two leading scorers from last season, Megan Linskens (12.0 ppg) and Deseree Stubbe (10.1 ppg), as well as experienced juniors Ashlynn Oehlert, Cady Crawford, Sarah Davis and CeJay Blakely.
Linskens and Stubbe have both shown an ability to score anywhere from around the basket out toward the perimeter. Stubbe and Oehlert have shown an ability to rebound, but the Indians may need help in that department from a new player after the production lost from last year’s graduates.
“Everyone knows Megan and Deseree can score, but they also are going to have to adjust to better defenders guarding them,” Subbert said. “Everyone else then will have to step up. We have a lot of girls that can score as well so I think it will be pretty evened up after that.”
The fast pace of play that Subbert hopes to continue to emply has been preached early in practice.
The hope this season is after improving from one win to five wins two years ago and five wins to eight last year, that they can continue jumping up toward the top of the South Central Conference.
“I think our success will come as the season goes along,” Subbert said. “Even though we have five juniors, we have a lot of freshman also that will get better as the season goes on as they get more and more experience. As long as we continue to get better, the wins will fall into place and hopefully it will be a step up from where we were last year.”
The Indians will find out a lot about themselves early on with tough opponents in Mount Ayr and Central Decatur coming up next week.
Jeff Ehrhardt will be the junior varsity coach.
Clarke started its season Tuesday against Martensdale-St. Marys. Coverage will be in next week’s OST.