Coming off of a Round of 16 appearance and with nearly the entire roster coming back, Sedona Red Rock High School’s girls basketball team will enter the 2020-21 winter sports season with among the highest expectations of any of the school’s teams.
The Scorpions were in the gym on Monday, June 8 for the beginning of summer practices and happy to be back on the court.
“The practices are going really well,” returning junior Hannah Lanchbury said. “I think we’re actually in pretty good shape for being off for so long. I think we’re a good team that works in the offseason. We don’t really slack. We pretty much go year-round.”
Coach Kirk Westervelt was pleased with the numbers throughout the first week of practice.
On Friday, the numbers were down due to some players having weekend plans. But over the previous two days, Westervelt noted that the Scorpions had twice as many players show up, forcing them to stagger the practices.
“We’ve been averaging 14 for the first couple of days,” he said. “Overall, in this first week back after this coronavirus respite, we’re pretty happy just to get out. The kids are happy to see each other.”
As is the case with all sports practices now, including basketball, teams are limited to not only how many people can be in the gym at a time, but also what those athletes are allowed to do.
“Of course we had some setbacks,” Lanchbury said. “This first week we can’t have scrimmages and we can’t do anything where we have to share balls, since we can’t be within six feet of each other. So it’s going to be a lot harder.”
Additionally, younger players, like incoming freshmen Skyla Bird and Rachel Roderick, don’t get to practice with their whole team to keep numbers under the 10-person maximum. In a sport where knowing the tendencies of teammates is especially important, that’s a great disadvantage to the younger players.
“These younger ones, the eighth graders, [don’t] know anything about the offensive sets we did,” Westervelt said. “But that’s what June and July are for. We’re just happy to get them in there and trying to learn a whole new set of offense.”
There are some advantages to the limitations, as well. Roderick noted that fewer players in practice means more one-on-one time with the coaches. And as Bird mentioned, the Scorpions get to spend a lot of time working on some of their individual skills.
“We’re able to shoot more, dribble more and since there’s less people here, we’re able to get more time in,” Bird said. “Coming from the small groups from what’s happened with COVID, we’re going to be really good next season, I think with shooting and with ball handling. Just being more confident since we’re learning all these things and not doing as many scrimmages.”
“We go from basket to basket to basket,” the coach added. “The first couple of days we were using all six baskets. It’s more repetition and skill work, which we need. And they get to know each other more. Instead of one big group, you can get to know some of these younger kids.”
