ANAMOSA— When the Raider girls basketball team walked off the floor at Cascade February 6, after a tough 55-29 loss at the hands of an extremely talented Cougars club, Anamosa also played their final contest as a member of the Tri-Rivers Conference.

“It was a pretty good run while it lasted,” said Anamosa girls basketball coach Jack Leighty after his team posted an 8-8 record overall in league play this past winter and were a vastly improved 9-13 overall. “We’ll miss playing the likes of Cascade and Monticello twice a year.
We’ve been with those two schools for a long time, dating back into the days of the Big Bend. We’ll miss playing Maquoketa Valley too. We’ve gotten quite a rivalry going with them lately. Hopefully we’ll be able to schedule those teams in non-conference games, but we’re also excited with what is ahead in the WaMaC.”

The Anamosa girls leave the Tri-Rivers Conference after a brief but highly successful four seasons that also saw a pair of league championships, the first ever for the school.

“The WaMaC will be a very competitive league,” said Leighty. “But I think we will be able to compete in that league next year. We have a lot of young kids who are ready for that kind of challenge playing against other class 3A schools. When you look at who we’ve played in districts the last few years, they’re mostly WaMaC schools. Playing a schedule like we will next year will prepare us for what we’re going to see come district time and we’ll be better for it.”

The Raider girls showed huge improvement this past winter with a team who at times started a freshman, three sophomores and a senior.

“We mixed the line-up around a bit this year but we had a lot of girls really step up and play well whether they were starting or coming off the bench,” said Leighty. “This team got better each and every practice and each and every game. In practice you could see them fighting for more playing time. They just didn’t have minutes handed to them. They had to work for them in practice and if they didn’t work, they wouldn’t see much of the floor come game time.”

OLIN — At the start of the 2006-2007 girls basketball season, Olin coach Wayne Lasack wanted one thing out of his group of girls.
Improvement!

But when it became evident early on in the season that this Lion girls basketball team would easily surpass last season’s five-win campaign, Lasack and the Olin girls wanted more.

“Given all the circumstances we had to deal with this year, we had a very successful season,” said Lasack as his team posted a 7-14 overall record this past winter including a 2-10 mark in Big East Conference action. “I feel very good looking back at the season.
Even though we did surpass last season’s win total, which was one of our goals, we still wanted our win total this year to be a little higher than it wound up being. But that’s just the competitor coming out in us. We feel we can win most games when we step out onto the floor and last year and the years before that, making a statement like that just wasn’t the case.”

The Olin girls basketball program took more Lion leaps forward this past season becoming one who proved to be a very challenging opponent on a nightly basis in the conference.

“That was one of the good things we came away with this year was the way we competed each and every game,” said Lasack.

“I can’t think of very many games where we just didn’t show up ready to play and that’s huge.”

While Olin’s seven wins is the most the program has seen in several years, it could have been even better as the Lions suffered four tough losses by five points or less.

“We’re a young team and still learning how to close out those close games,” said Lasack. “That’s something I know we’ll improve on next year just from the experience factor. We’ve been through it before and we’ll know how to react.”

Tough losses against Midland (37-36), Calamus-Wheatland (45-43), Bellevue (46-41) and to the Eagles again in districts (65-63 in overtime) will toughen the Olin resolve next winter.

The Lions will have to do without the services of lone senior Jackee Butteris next winter as the Olin starter and one of just seven players out in the entire program, will be missed.

“Jackee was such a good leader for this team,” said Lasack. “She was always our calming force who when things would be out of hand, the girls would look to her for leadership. She didn’t let us down all year either.”

Butteris averaged 1.3 points and 2.6 rebounds a contest, but putting up numbers wasn’t what she was all about.

WYOMING— Coming into the 2006-2007 season, Midland girls basketball coach Josh Bentley knew he could count on the leadership provided by a whopping seven seniors as the Eagles made their run to the top of the Big East Conference.

“We relied on them all season long and they helped us accomplish a lot this year,” said Bentley of seniors Mary Burmeister, Amanda Hansen, Sammy Reid, Jessica Clark, Kassidy Schroeder, Cassi Baker and Megan Pegorick. “We had to deal with some injuries and some other issues, but in the end, we played as a team and it was our seniors leading the way.”

At full strength when the 2006-2007 season started, the Midland girls opened with a pair of big wins over Lisbon (56-35) and East Central (49-28).

In the second contest against the Raiders, the Eagles lost the services of Reid to a devastating knee injury. The star senior had led the team in scoring a year ago and was looked upon for another stellar campaign in this her final run as an Midland girls basketball player.

“It hurt losing Sammy, especially so early in the season,” said Bentley. “But we also had a lot of girls on this team ready to step up and accept some of the load that Sammy normally carried.”