By TYLER HENRY
Salina Post contributor
After finishing the 2019-2020 season 16-6, the Southeast of Saline girls basketball team is looking for yet another impressive season in 2020-2021.
Shauna Smith returns for her fifth year as the head coach of the Lady Trojans.
Southeast of Saline will return several key members of last year's team, and will have a lineup that will look like this as the season tips off.
Karsyn Schlesener (Jr, 5-7, 18.8 ppg in 2019-20)
Alaina Yianakopulos (Jr, 5-7)
Mallorie Pearson (Jr, 5-6)
Avery Caselman (So, 5-7)
Reagan Goetz (So, 5-9)
The Trojans will also get some help off the bench from Ashlyn Johnson and Ivie Douglas.
We had a chance to visit with Coach Smith ahead of the season opener to ask some questions about this Lady Trojan team.
Q: What was your overall takeaway from the season your team had in 2019-2020?
A: I was very satisfied to win and keep moving on last year. We had a stretch where I didn’t know if we were going to win very many more games and then we ended up winning a lot of them, so I was very satisfied with where we ended up with the personnel that we had.
Heading into the new season, what would you say is the biggest strength of this year's team?
We’re super athletic, I feel like we’re deeper than we have been in the past and that should allow us to give Karsyn more of a break.
And what would you say is the biggest weakness?
Our weakness is still that we just don’t have any height, we don’t have a big inside player so rebounding is going to be a weakness of ours.
What has been the key to the success that you’ve been able to build within this program over the last couple of years?
We include our junior high in a lot of what we do and our junior high coaches are very open to that. They lift weights with us, they do skill drills with us, and that makes it a much easier transition for those kids when they do get to the high school level.
As we near the beginning of the season what is your expectation for your team this year?
We would like to be competing for a league championship and to get one step further in sub-state. I think we can definitely contend for those things this year, we’re a completely different team from last year.
The Lady Trojans season begins with a 6pm home tip against the Hesston Lady Swathers.
Stay tuned for a pregame article ahead of both the boys and girls games and tune in to KINA to hear both games or stream them right here on Salina Post.