Lady Plainsmen show noticeable improvement over last season
The Perkins County girls basketball team ended their season at sub-districts two weeks ago, finishing with a 9-14 record.
Coach Deanne Bishop said she was overall very pleased with the progress the team made this season.
Last summer, before the season started, nine team members completed the 5,000 Shot Club, a ball-handling and shooting routine.
“I feel like their hard work translated to fewer turnovers and a better field goal percentage, as demonstrated by our season stats,” Bishop said.
The girls who finished the 5,000 Shot Club included Rylee Huff, Hannah Kempf, Meghan Bishop, Samantha Patrick, Kylie Tucker, Meredith Gloy, Katie Cook, Kailee Potts and Ella Uehling.
Since the season started in December, the girls earned wins over Potter-Dix, Garden County, Hyannis, Wallace, Sutherland (twice), Paxton, Maxwell and Creek Valley.
This year was the first time any of the girls on the team have been a part of winning the Perkins County Booster Club Holiday Tournament.
This was also the first time in around 10 years, Bishop said, that the Perkins County High School Girls Basketball program has won a postseason game, which was their subdistrict game against Sutherland.
On the JV level, the girls had a winning record and were competitive in every match, she added.
One of the toughest challenges the girls can face, Bishop continued, is to play against teams that hold a mental edge over them. Last year, the Perkins County Varsity Girls program lost to North Platte Saint Pat’s 20-70.
“It would have been easy for the girls to be ‘mentally beat’ before they even stepped on the floor to play NPSP this year,” Bishop said. “However, we did a great job of rising to the occasion.”
This year, the Lady Plainsmen fell to NPSP by just two points on a last-second shot, 55-57.
“While it was tough for the team to be that close and still lose, the girls gained a lot of confidence in their ability to close the gap, play well and compete,” Bishop noted.
There are Four Core Areas the team evaluates after practices and games which Bishop uses to help keep things in perspective:
1. Did you work hard?
2. Were you coachable?
3. Were you a good teammate?
4. Did you have fun?
“We can ‘win the day’ and develop life skills by being intentional about finding ways to meet these areas,” Bishop said.
When compared to last year’s stats, the team improved in 18 of 19 areas. The only category that did not show improvement over last year was total rebounds. While the number of rebounds increased from 862 to 893, the average in 2019-2020 was 41.0, and 38.8 this year.
Three senior players will be graduating this year: Dani Burge, Rylee Huff and Hannah Kempf.
“I would like to thank our senior players for their years of hard work and leadership,” Bishop said. “They can take a lot of pride in being a part of a successful season that showed a lot of improvement and a positive trend for future years.”
“I’d also like to thank our senior managers, Savannah Schmitt and Kayla Wid,” she continued. “There’s a tremendous amount of work that goes on behind the scenes that makes our practices and games run smoothly. These two individuals did a great job of anticipating needs and were willing to learn new skills such as filming, score book keeping and how to operate the scoreboard.”
Bishop plans to continue coaching high school girls basketball in the coming school year.
She said she is excited to build upon the progress that this year’s team has made
See next week’s edition for team stat comparisons between 2019-2020 and 2020-2021, and individual stats.