The girls’ basketball season has come to an end with the team finishing strong in their final game by beating Klein 59 to 29, making for an overall season score of 15-14 wins and losses and 5-9 in district. This year saw many improvements both on and off the court, including three times the amount of wins as last year.
“A lot of people doubted them in the success they would have this season,” Coach Adrianna Bendick said. “So they used that as motivation to work hard this season.”
Because there have not been many wins for the team over the past few years, other schools’ teams did not take the players seriously. This year they had to overcome the challenge of having to prove that their team was worthy of respect and serious about the game.
“People didn’t respect us at all,” senior Katie Wrobbel said. “We hadn’t done well in a while and people didn’t take us seriously.”
To prepare for the season the team went to a camp at Texas A&M over the summer and did a lot of conditioning. One thing that made a difference in this year’s results was the team chemistry and the bond the players developed.
“Last year the team chemistry just wasn’t there,” senior Shar De Wynne said. “The players didn’t want to listen to the coach and everybody wanted to do their own thing.”
It was the seniors’ idea to spend more time bonding this year due to difficulties faced last year within the team. The team often gathered at Katie’s house, where she said they’d do random things like watch movies and the Ellen show and play video games. Once they had a puzzle-making competition to see who could put together a puzzle the fastest. The team bond proved to affect the results—for the first time in six years they beat Klein twice and Klein Forest for the first time in four years.
“We hung out outside of school and most teams don’t do that,” junior Nia Gusman said. “It made a big difference. I actually wanted to play this year. We didn’t argue as much and there was no fighting this year. It made it fun and exciting.”
In 2014 the team finished 7th in district, but this year they finished in 5th. The loss that barred them from progressing further was against Klein Forest, whom they had played and beat going into playoffs. But this second time they lost by three points. After taking a moment to recover from the results, Wynne gathered the team in a huddle afterward and gave everyone a pep talk.
“Basically, I told them that no one had anything to be ashamed of,” Wynne said. “I told them that everyone had worked hard. The seniors had set goals at the beginning of the season and had accomplished all of them except for one–making district. And I told the juniors this year to keep that feeling of hurt inside them so that they will be hungrier to get to that spot next year.”