The Sweet Home High School girls finished their season on Feb. 24 with a 60-27 loss at La Pine.
La Pine built a 29-16 halftime score on its way to the win.
The Huskies finish with no wins in league play, but they did accrue four wins in non-league games.
“I think that they, starting last year, they’re on the ground floor hopefully with the foundation for building a program,” said Coach Steve Brown about the end of the season.
He said many coaches and players commented about how much the Huskies improved during the season, Brown said. The girls never complained and just kept playing hard.
Getting beaten “is hard when you know you’ve got to play them again,” Brown said, and the team faced personnel problems mid-season with the departure of Courtney Kent and Molly Dadey, who left to pursue other priorities but still helped out the team on game nights.
“Their contributions were greatly appreciated,” Brown said, but it left the Huskies running with just eight players.
“It was either feast or famine,” Brown said, and it would have been nice if all four of the team’s top-scoring players, Haley Kent, Katie Virtue, Harlee Brendle and Jordan Miller, could have come together on the same night.
Caytlin Gillespie could put points on the board too, Brown said. India Porter and Amanda Hubbard were great defenders, and Jessica Stockman played mostly junior varsity to get as much time on the court as she could.
Miller, Porter, Gillespie and Stockman will form the core for next year’s team, Brown said. Gillespie will be a force if she continues to improve her outside shot. When she’s on, she’ll usually drop a pair of threes.
The junior varsity, which was mostly freshmen and sophomores, improved throughout the season, Brown said. “Coach (Josh) Marvin did a super job. He had a hard row to hoe because we only ended up with eight or nine.”
They’ll be sophomores and juniors next year, Brown said, and he is hoping that incoming freshmen will round a JV 2 team.
Coaches Brown and Marvin are already planning summer camp and Saturday clinics to try to get more girls involved in the program; and he needs to get next year’s seniors out.
“I’m going to have to sell,” Brown said.
The girls will hold their awards banquet at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday at the High School.