Indee girls return experience, hope for improvement
Independence seniors Amiah Ives and Ahnna Bautch worked on post moves during practice last week. (Times photograph by Andrew Dannehy)
Injuries and inexperience hurt the Independence girls basketball team last year as they went 8-15, but they’re returning four starters with the hopes of having a better season.
The Indees were at roughly .500 last season before leading scorer Avery Pape was lost for the season with an injury. They lost another senior who was expected to be a key contributor before the season even began and the team didn’t have the depth or experience to overcome the blows.
Amiah Ives led the team in points and rebounds as a junior last year, with averages of 8.9 points and 7.7 rebounds per game. Another returning player, Callie Zastrow, wasn’t far behind with averages of 5.1 points and 5.7 rebounds, while Ahnna Bautch averaged 3.1 points and 5.5 rebounds. A fourth returning senior, Rhianna Thesien saw her playing time increase last season as she averaged 2.2 points and 3.1 rebounds.
The team also returns junior Adison Pronschinske, a guard who has played since her freshman season. She averaged 2.4 points and 3.8 rebounds as a sophomore.
“We have great experience with our starting five but after that, we don’t have anyone with much varsity experience at all,” Coach John Zilla said. “We should be a good rebounding team and we should have some great leadership from our older players.”
Zilla said a focus will be maximizing his team’s possessions and limiting the opponent’s.
“Our ballhandling needs to improve from last year,” Zilla said. “We need to improve our defensive rebounding, we need to do a better job of limiting opponents to one shot per possession.”
Zilla said the team also needs to shoot the ball better from both the field and the free-throw line.
Zilla mentioned, however, that the team has already suffered a blow as Grace Roskos was lost to a torn ACL. With that, he has little experience coming off the bench. Still, he’s looking for his team to be competitive and get better as the tournament approaches.
“We want to improve from week to week throughout the season,” Zilla said.
