With three starters gone, the Cassville girls basketball team approached its 20 days of summer workouts as an opportunity to scope a new starting lineup and get as many players as possible some minutes on the floor.
Clayton Bagby, Cassville girls basketball coach, said the summer session started May 22 and ended June 20.
“We did four days [the week of May 22] and three days the next in our own gym,” he said. “We lost a couple girls that had been around for quite a while, but we have some who are coming in with potential to help right away. The next three weeks were Mondays at Aurora and us hosting on Thursdays. We finished in Branson June 19-20. We played close to 30 running clock games; the last ones 24 minutes per game.”
Bagby said about 16-18 girls participated in summer sessions, led by two returning starters — Madison Halterman and Kyler Hayward.
“Madison will assume the team leader role,” Bagby said. “She is the leading returning scorer and is about the hardest worker we have. Kyler is our second returning starter with a year experience at point guard. coming in as a junior, she’s really good on the defensive side communicating, taking charges and positioning herself to be in the right places.”
With nine other Lady Wildcats seeing varsity minutes over the summer, Bagby said the competition to fill the three remaining starting positions is ongoing.
“Elly Ramaeker and Hailey Gautney split time as our sixth last year, and Aubrey Stoufer has really improved this summer,” he said.
A big focus for the team in its summer schedule was offense, pressure and transitions.
“The big thing we focused on was offense, where we struggled last year, on our hard press and taking care of the ball,” Bagby said. “We worked a lot on transitions and hope we make our mistakes in the summer instead of the season. And, we definitely tried to get more pressure on the ball.”
Through the 20 days, Bagby said what stood out the most to him was how the team was coming together despite having so many new faces on the floor.
“This group has come back together and get along pretty well,” he said. “It impressed me how well we worked as a team even though we played so many new groups that had never been on the floor together. I hope we can keep that chemistry going forward.”
