One team, one family.
As the girl’s basketball season revs up to begin the long road to Rupp, the bond between each other has never been stronger. Beginning this season with a younger team, they forge new bonds both in and outside of the game that give the team its meaning: sisterhood. Working together, the few upperclassmen are balancing their own position as a player and shaping the new players into lady chargers.
Anna Rodgers, a senior shooting guard, has been on the team for her entire high school career. Witnessing three years’ worth of players come and go, she has a solid gauge of the community within the locker room. “Well, we all had to come closer because we just like, kinda had our groups last year and then I think we’re all just like, super tight this year,” Rodgers said.
This season, the team is being driven to “start fresh” with the team primarily being younger classmen. But, this isn’t a bad thing. With new players comes new talent that can transform the style of the team. To dominate in the upcoming season, the team will shift its strategy to emphasize the fast-paced nature of its player’s technique and style. “We have a freshman that’s pretty big so that will help, but there’s definitely going to be a lot of people who are bigger than her,” Rodgers said. Having a lot of height on the team definitely has its perks of easy shots from the paint, but Rodgers is optimistic that their shooting from the arc will elevate them over the edge.
“I think I know how to get out of bad situations but I trust my teammates to help me out because I know they have my back and they can get the job done,” Rodgers said. Throughout the off-season, the team has worked to become a tight-knit community of players young and old: they put the basketballs down and did some team building. The older players drove around the younger ones while playing a scavenger hunt put together by the coaches. “We had to do multiple different things that made us go out of our comfort zones, so that brought us closer together as a team,” junior shooting guard, Carly Bryant said.
The scavenger hunt started in the main gym where the girls split off into three groups. After beginning with clues that led them around the gym, and eventually to the CCC gymnasium, they packed up and began their road trip around town. They did everything ranging from going on hikes and bobbing for apples, to sticking their hands into buckets of less-than-ideal material. One task involved getting “pickle things”. Bryant’s group, unfortunately, got pickle-flavored chips instead, setting them back. Eventually, they landed on pickled peas, only to be told at the end of the hunt that they had to eat the peas.
The winning team was led by senior, Kylie Huber. “We had such a fun time with the scavenger hunt. At first, my team was in dead last and then we eventually made our way to first place. The skills we used during this will most definitely translate into games. things like the amount of communication we had to use, problem-solving, and trusting each other are things we are really keying in on for this season,” Huber said.
The team has put in tremendous work to unite everyone through words of inspiration. The team leaders came together and decided on eight choice words to describe the upcoming season. The words this season are, Accountability, growth, competition, loyalty, belief, family, trust, overcome, and committed. “We just have a lot of them to keep in mind and that’s helpful because like, you know what your goals are and we’re all on the same page,” junior shooting guard Kennedy Scott said.
Being on the same page is step one for all good teams. To be a great team, they have to have great coaches. “They [the coaches] definitely come to me more about everything and they’re always asking me if anything’s going on and I think they just trust me to get my team in the right spots they need to be in and know everything that’s going on,” Rodgers said. This perception was shared with the rest of the upperclassmen as well. Most of them have grown up on AAU teams with the coaches.
While growing into the players they are today, the coaches have been there watching every step of the way. As they step more into their roles as leaders, the coaches have started to come to them as mentors more than a coach. The coaching staff encourages the upperclassmen to speak up and guide the team.
The coach’s relationship hasn’t been the only one that has changed. Aubrey Packer, a junior forward, has had a change in experience this year with the family aspect of the team becoming a lot more literal. With her younger sister playing on the team this year as a freshman, it has changed how the other underclassmen view her. “I think it’s amazing. It’s one of the first times we’ve really been able to play together,” Packer said. “I do think I’m a bit more close to this year’s freshmen just because she’s in their grade. Like, I’ve known them, she’s grown up with them their entire lives. They’ve played together forever. So I’ve known them for a really long time. It’s been really fun to have them up here too and be able to play with them as well.”
Packer has been able to play with her younger sister, Lyla Packer, on and off at a few different points in their careers, but this time, they have both grown into seasoned players. Packer is looking forward to seeing how things go with her sister as the games begin.
Teammates don’t have to be literal sisters to play part of the sisterhood, and the bounds of the court can’t contain it either. “ if anyone’s down and needs some picking up, we make sure that that happens. If somebody needs like, a ride home or needs help with schoolwork, we make sure that they get that help. We just make sure that basketball, outside of basketball, everyone is part of our family and we make sure that everyone gets taken care of and gets the help they need,” Packer said.
As the girls exit the locker room before each game, they tap the sign above the door, a visual representation of the sisterhood that they share; the building blocks that the team is founded on.
