By TYLER HENRY
Salina Post contributor
The Bennington girls basketball team will look to reload and improve upon an 8-8 2020-21 campaign.
The Bulldogs will be under the direction of a new head coach as Tracy Piepho takes the reigns in his first season of varsity basketball.
Piepho spent the last 14 years at Bennington working as the junior high girl's basketball coach and will look to bring that knowledge to the high school level this year.
The Bulldogs graduated five seniors last year and will come into this season with a pair of sophomores in a starting lineup that should look something like this.
PG- Peyton Debold (Jr)
SG- Trista Watson (Sr)
SF- Tambryn Watson (So)
F- Kolbie Bartlett (So)
C- Olivia Lawson (Sr)
Bennington will also be expecting big minutes off the bench from a deep rotation that will include Ashlyn Harbaugh, Rori Miles, Ava Lawson, Paige Parker, and Kaeleighann Bergman.
Ahead of the new season, we had a chance to speak with coach Piepho about his squad.
Q: What do you want to add to the culture of girls basketball at Bennington?
A: “I’d like to build on what our previous coaches have already established. We want our girls to have a sense of work ethic and to have a sense of pride in what they do. We do want to speed things up a little bit on the floor but overall we have good, hard-working girls and we want to keep that sense of team unity.”
Q: What is this team’s biggest strength coming into the new year?
A: “When we’re at full strength we have a team that knows my expectations since they played for me at the junior high level which should help and we play hard every night. I never have to question this team's effort and we’re awfully deep. We have a lot of different players that can step up on any given night.”
Q: What are some of the question marks you still have heading into the first few games?
A: “We’re currently dealing with a lot of injuries and getting some players back from covid but we also graduated five seniors last year that played big minutes over the last four years so we do have some inexperience. We’ll be changing up our offense so our goal is to score more than 40 points and change the type of game that we play.”
Q: What are the goals and expectations that this team has set for themselves this year?
A: “We’ve adopted a phrase from a country song this year, ‘don’t back up, don’t back down.’ We’re not going to roll over for anyone even with our inexperience and we’re not talking about winning games, we’re talking about winning each play. Those are the things that are going to lead us to more wins in the long run.”
The Bulldogs will tip off their season hosting Sylvan-Lucas on Friday, December 3rd.
For more on Bennington hoops, stay tuned to the Salina Post.