With eight of the Lady Wildcats’ nine letterwinners from the 2023-2024 season returning to the fold, the Cassville girls basketball team has its sights set on being the first team above .500 since 2017-2018.
Clayton Bagby, Cassville girls basketball coach entering his third season at the helm, said back-to-back 14-14 seasons in 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 gave way to a 12-15 mark last year. However, records are not everything.
“Statistically, we were an improved team and finished the year 11-10 in our last 21 and 3-3 in Conference,” Bagby said. “We hope that experience [for our eight of nine returning letterwinners], and another year of age for a couple of our underclassmen that were significant contributors last year, will result in more early season success this year.”
Of those eight letterwinners, six were considered starters. Audrey Kennedy and Aubrey Stoufer were full-time starters, as was Kyler Hayward when healthy. Elly Ramaeker and Hailey Gautney both started about 20 games, and Avery Stokes also had a handful of starts.
The squad this season features four seniors: Hayward, Ramaeker, Gautney and Kyla Bowling.
“Kyler will be in her third year starting,” Bagby said. “She missed significant time with an injury from late in our first game last year that forced some shuffling, but she is a great leader on the floor and plays larger than her size on the defensive end. We expect her experience from the previous two seasons to show this year. Elly is the ultimate teammate and is known as our defensive stopper on the team. She earned that role late in her sophomore year and has continued to improve.
“Hailey is very athletic and runs the floor well. She has continued to improve and has put up some really good games over the last couple of years. We will look for her to stretch the floor out of the 4-spot and hopefully make defenses make decisions. Kyla is a very good athlete that had a role off the bench. She runs the floor well and we would like to see her carve out a role on the defensive end.”
Stoufer is the only junior on the squad, but the sophomore class includes Stokes, Audrey Kennedy and twin sister Taylor Kennedy.
“Aubrey is returning after starting fulltime as a sophomore, and along with Audrey, she helped handle the point guard duties in Kyler’s absence,” Bagby said. “At 5-10 in a guard spot, she has the ability to give offenses and defenses trouble and should also benefit from being able to play off the ball more. We look for her to improve her rebounding and offensive numbers because of this. Avery was our third-leading scorer as a freshman and generally our sixth man throughout the year. Her presence around the basket on the defensive end is a difference-maker, and she and we took strides this summer utilizing her on the offensive side of the ball as well as with her free throw shooting.
“Audrey is a great athlete and was our second-leading scorer as a freshman last year. Watching early in practice, you can definitely see physical growth in her from her freshman season. She will benefit this year from being able to play off the ball more this year than when she had to help handle it a lot last year. Taylor also came off the bench for us last year and split time between JV and varsity, and she even led us in scoring a game or two. She is one of the better outside shooters on the team, and with a year of high school experience, she is another we expect to take a big step this year on the varsity floor.”
Leadership- wi s e , Hayward is considered the voice of the squad, a role she also played for the Cassville softball team this fall.
“Kyler has natural leadership ability on and off the floor or softball field and probably inherits the [leader] role based on her experience and the fact she has been in the point guard spot,” Bagby said. “But all the seniors have great qualities that make them great teammates and even better people.”
Beyond the eight main contributors, Bagby said other underclassmen will be vying for time on the floor.
“We are blessed with good numbers this year,” he said. “After those eight, we have another handful of girls that will be pushing for varsity playing time and pushing those eight, and that should lead to some competitive practices. Who steps up and takes those minutes will be fun to watch.”
With the main goal of achieving a winning season, Bagby said experience is helpful, but work still needs done.
“We need to continue to improve in all facets of the game,” he said. “We do a lot of things OK, but to reach that goal of finishing .500, we need to continue to improve in all areas. Ball security is and will continue to be an emphasis. This tends to be an issue for teams all over, but we would like to see the turnover number cut to help improve offensive opportunities.
“Finishing is also something we work on a lot. We do a good job of getting shots at the basket, we just need to finish them at a higher percentage.”
Cassville kicks off the season on Monday, the home opener against Pierce City. Bagby said the remainder of the schedule, which includes tournaments at Crane, Southwest and Marionville, is a decent mix of larger-, smaller- and similar-sized schools.
“Conference is going to be improved this year with the addition of Aurora and Mt. Vernon back, and a lot of teams returning most of their rosters,” Bagby said. “Our tournaments also feature some very good teams, including the Marionville tournament that will likely have a very good team going 0-3.”
While conference and district games carry some extra weight — and a Feb. 3, 2025, home bout against cross-county rival Monett may carry extra emotion — Bagby said each game is important.
“I would love to see fans and students show up for all the games,” he said. “This is a hardworking group of girls that are heavily involved in the school and community, and they should be a fun group to watch this year.”
