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Members of the 2021-2022 Perkins County girls basketball team are (front row, l-r): Ava Reese, Autumn Anderson, Kylie Tucker, Meghan Bishop, Hallie Fisher and Meredith Gloy. Back row: Zoe Baumgartner, Kenna Dickinson, Isabella Torres, Briana Ledford, Kaitlin Meyer, Maggie Fisher, Ella Uehling, Kailee Potts, Casey Johnson, Emily Cornelius and Libby Cole. Not pictured is Charis Goodell.

PC girls to start season with games vs Hershey, Bridgeport next Thursday

The 2021-2022 basketball season is underway at Perkins County Schools, with the first game of the season quickly approaching.

Deanne Bishop will be returning this year as the team’s head coach, along with assistant varsity coaches Mike Mayer and Renee Seiler at her side. This year’s student managers are freshmen Zoe Baumgartner, Kenna Dickinson and Isabella Torres.

Perkins County’s girls basketball program has 15 players composing the team this year, with five freshmen, five sophomores, one junior and four seniors.

All of the sophomores, juniors and seniors are returning players, leaving just the freshmen as new players on the team.

Freshmen on the team are Libby Cole, Emily Cornelius, Charis Goodell, Casey Johnson and Briana Ledford.

Sophomores are Maggie Fisher, Kaitlin Meyer, Kailee Potts, Ava Reese and Ella Uehling.

Meredith Gloy is the only junior on the team this year.

Meghan Bishop, Hallie Fisher, Autumn Anderson and Kylie Tucker are the team’s seniors.

Practices began Monday, Nov. 15, and Bishop said the team has been working on a combination of base conditioning, skill-specific conditioning, speed work and technique work.

She added that the continuity and consistency in terms of terminology, fundamentals and key strategies is already apparent, in regards to the new freshmen on the team.

“We’ve been able to progress to the ‘next level’ of skills and are ahead of where we’ve been as a team than in previous years,” she said. “I’m grateful to have such talented junior high girls basketball coaches to coordinate our program efforts, like Madison Seamann, Mark Bottom, Tim Bishop and Megan Dormann. Together we have a solid 7-12 girls basketball program in place.”

The girls played a scrimmage game Thursday, Nov. 18, which showed Bishop things the girls are already doing really well together, and things that might still need some work.

“We did a good job of pushing the pace and looking up the floor for transition points,” Bishop said. “We are still working through the nuances of some offensive and defensive wrinkles. The timing of things like defensive rotations, effective screens, cuts and looks will come with continued practice.”

Bishop wants to give a shout-out to the junior high and high school girls who worked hard to better the basketball program this summer.

“Each summer, our Perkins County girls basketball players have the opportunity to participate in the ‘5,000 Shot Club,’” she said. “This is a shooting program that combines ball handling, form shooting and dynamic, game-pace shots.”

Each workout, she explained, is specific to guards or posts and includes five minutes of ball handling and 200 shots.

“Players can shoot in the gym after morning weight lifting sessions, at a park or in any driveway which makes it flexible for their various locations and schedules,” Bishop continued. “Players who compete the full program are awarded a ‘5,000 Shot Club’ t-shirt.”

This year, the challenge was also opened up to challenge the junior high players. In total, there were 13 current 7-12 Perkins County girls basketball players who completed the program including Autumn Angerson, Meghan Bishop, Kylie Tucker, Meredith Gloy, Kaitlin Meyer, Kailee Potts, Ella Uehling, Emily Cornelius, Briana Ledford, Jacqueline Gloy, Lauren Bishop, Haylea McGreer and Madison Potts.

Combined, they took 65,000 shots, including 16,250 freethrows, and put in just over 27 hours of ball handling.

“Their hard work will make both themselves and our girls basketball program even better,” Bishop said.

Upcoming Games

This year’s regular season will run from Thursday, Dec. 2 to Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022 with 18 game days on the schedule, excluding multi-day tournaments. Sub-district games will be in mid-February, followed by districts Feb. 25 and State in Lincoln in early March.

The Lady Plainsmen basketball team will play their first game Thursday, Dec. 2, hosting Hershey with the jayvee girls game starting at 3:30 p.m. and the varsity game at 5 p.m.

The very next day, they will head to Bridgeport for junior varsity and varsity games. The junior varsity team’s game will start at 4 p.m. followed by the varsity game at 5:30 p.m.

After that, the girls won’t face another team for a week, when they host Kimball Friday, Dec. 10.

 

The Grant Tribune-Sentinel

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