By TYLER HENRY
Lead Sportswriter - Salina Post
After finally getting over the hump and finishing north of .500 at 11-10 last season, the Salina South girl’s basketball team is back and hungry for more ahead of the 2024-25 season.
Justin Ebert returns to lead the Lady Cougars in his 4th year as head girls basketball coach, and 17th year with Salina South.
Several familiar faces will dot the Salina South starting five as senior Tamia Cheeks is joined by four juniors in Paityn Fritz, Brooklyn Jordan, Elle Barth and Brylee Moss.
Off the bench, the Lady Cougars will look to four sophomores in Isabelle Maxton, Lauren Crow, Sophie Daily and Promynce McNeal, and a freshman in Lennon Haas.
Before the start of the season later this week, we had a chance to catch up with Coach Ebert and get his thoughts on this year’s Lady Cougars.
Q: How do you feel about the state of the program at South and the progress you’ve made over these last few years?
A: It’s nice that we’ve made steps and can see the progress we’ve made in things like a winning record last season. We ended the year frustrated with how things went after a really good start and one of our first rankings in a long time but things fizzled out, and we never got going again after the Christmas break. Our girls have taken positive steps forward and are hungry for more.”
Q: What feels like the biggest strength of this year’s team ahead of the season?
A: We have another year of varsity experience, and that’s the biggest thing. We’re not going to put anyone on the floor that hasn’t seen significant minutes which is big after a season where we had a lot of inexperience. We’re way ahead of where we were last year at this time, and our girls understand what we’re trying to do on offense and defense.”
Q: On the other side of that, what are the biggest lingering question marks you still have before this first game?
A: We’re still trying to figure out our rotations and depth. We feel good about our starting five, but we’re still finding those pieces that can come off the bench and contribute to scoring, defending and rebounding. We have a lot of girls fighting for time on the varsity court, and we feel like we can go 11 deep if we need to, but we want to trim that down to 8 or 9. It’s an open competitio,n and we’ll see who steps up in the next few weeks.
Q: What are the goals and expectations that this team has laid out for themselves this season?
A: The first goal we always talk about as a team is where we’re at in our league standings. The AVCTL is tough, and last year we were able to compete with the Hutchinsons and Maizes of the world, but now we want to see if we can go get a Maize South or a Derby. We also talk about playing in the SIT championship game and trying to make a sub-state championship game to give ourselves an opportunity to go play an extra week in March.
The Lady Cougars open their regular season this Friday when they travel to Great Bend to battle the Panthers.