By TYLER HENRY
Salina Post contributor
The Sacred Heart girls basketball team will be in search of another successful season after an 11-8 finish in 2020-21.
The Knights will be under the direction of a new head coach as Carl Hines takes the reins from Keenan Thomas, who took a new coaching position in Liberal this offseason.
Sacred Heart will field a team bursting with young talent and should have a starting lineup that looks like this come tip-off on Friday.
G- Katie Weiss (So)
G- Tessa Junk (Jr)
G- Kiera Cochran (Jr)
PF- Avery Eshelman (So)
C- Jailynn Rowe (Sr)
The Knights will also look for big minutes off the bench from a pair of sophomores in Maegan Torrey and Sydney Goetz?
Ahead of his first season at the helm, we had a chance to speak with Coach Hines to ask a few questions about his team.
Q: What are the biggest things you want to add to the culture of girls basketball at Sacred Heart?
A: “We want to continue the tradition of the school here at Sacred Heart. We want to create an atmosphere off the court to help our young ladies become young women and we want to work on perseverance and discipline on the court.”
Q: How excited are you guys to be back to a relatively normal season?
A: “Things are definitely more normal than they have been in a long time and I know that our players, our parents and our school community are excited. I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity that’s been afforded to me by the administration here at Sacred Heart.”
Q: Coming into the new season what would you say is this team's biggest strength?
A: “We’re young and we lost some experience this summer but we’re going to lean on our seniors for leadership and we’re excited about our youth and our new system that our team is starting to grasp.”
Q: What are the biggest question marks you still have ahead of the first game?
A: “I want to see how far along we are in the new system. It will be interesting to see how bought in they are to that and I know it will be hard for those upperclassmen because I’m the third guy they’ve seen and they’ve been asked to relearn everything so many times.”
Q: What are some of the goals that this team has placed on themselves this season?
A: “We want to do well in our league. Southeast and Beloit have run things for quite some time now so it’ll be interesting to see what kinds of strides we can make throughout the year. Our girls want to do well in the postseason as well but we all know that our most important game is the next one on the schedule and we want to peak at the most important time of the year.”
Sacred Heart will open their season on December third at Ell-Saline, looking to start 2021 with a big win over an area rival.
For more on Lady Knights hoops stay tuned to the Salina Post.