By Keeghan Gittins
For The New Era
The Sweet Home girls basketball made big strides last season, and after not graduating any seniors, the Huskies believe they’re ready for another step forward.
“Last season we showed drastic improvement from the previous year,” Head Coach Erika Evans said of her team, which improved from a 0-10 league record and 1-19 overall record in 2023-24 to 1-9, 5-16 last year.
The Huskies improved their total points scored by over 300 points, and held it down on the defensive end, allowing 100 less points than the 23-24 season.
Sweet Home was able to capture its first league win in two years, beating Newport. The win was the Huskies’ third in three seasons. The Huskies play in the Oregon West Conference which produced last year’s eventual state champion Stayton, which beat fellow OWC member Philomath in the state final.
“We proved a lot to ourselves about what could be done with a young roster and a year of improvement,” said Evans.
With the entire roster back and no seniors lost, Sweet Home enters the new season in a very different position. Instead of rebuilding, the Huskies are able to pick up right where they left off.
“I expect to build on last year’s improvement, we’re returning our entire roster, so we’re able to start in the refinement process rather than building from the ground up.” Evans said.
The Huskies have already started strong, opening the year with a win over Elmira — the program’s first season-opening victory since 2021. The Huskies were down 13-3 late in the first quarter but battled back with tough defense to win 37-33.
Then, on the road at Phoenix Dec. 5, the Huskies lost to a good team 46-40 in overtime,
“I was very, very, very proud of our girls,” Evans said. “We were playing a really competitive and likely playoff team at Phoenix, and we went to overtime, and at points, we were down, like in the fourth quarter by eight points at one time, and we overcame that.”
On Saturday, the Huskies beat Douglas 48-18.
“We had our biggest positive point in that every single person on our varsity roster had two or more rebounds, and every single person was in the pluses and the plus minus category,” she said. “So that was great.
“We expect to have an extremely competitive season.”
Sweet Home’s starting lineup changes from game to game.
Their three seniors, Addy Vannice, Loralai Mark and Aubrey Newberry, Evans says, set the tone for the program.
“They are going to be huge assets in terms of leadership. They’ve helped build the excitement around this season through their perseverance and hard work.”
The rest of the roster includes juniors Mailey Brewer, Aaliyah Brown, Brooke Elder and Amara Gonzales, and sophomores Dymin Flowers, Taylor Gasky, Rylee Mabe, and Dinah Watkins.
The Huskies junior varsity roster is made up of juniors Jayla Moore and Khloe Wood; sophomores Kayla Bain, Flowers, Emma Graber, Adriana Morse and Dinah Watkins; and freshmen Aubree Bartlett, Allison Dennull, Kayla Matthews, Jocelyn Simmons, Tayler Sullivan and Braelyn Walker.
Evans believes summer ball was a huge asset to the girls in preparing for this season.
“Spring and summer ball gave our girls time to challenge themselves,” said Evans. “We have multiple players who improved their outside shooting, post moves, and overall basketball IQ.”
Evans added that working with different coaches in assistants Nick Tyler, Caytlin Gillespie and Daniel Matthews, has helped the team understand the game in new ways and grow closer as a group.
With the program trending up, Evans hopes the community will show up and support the group.
“I want community members to come support this very special and hardworking group of young women,” she said.
The Oregon West Conference has teams ranked first, second and fourth in the state, all of which return almost all their lineups from last year.
“It’s definitely really tough competition,” Evans said. “But we are really excited to show them something different in a game. I think we will shock them. We are definitely coming out swinging this year and I think we’ll be more competitive in a lot of our league games.”
