When any team experiences state-level success, the question in the following season is whether or not they can repeat this success, which can put a lot of pressure on a team. However, the 2023-24 Yutan girls basketball team is ready to accept that challenge.

“I am excited for this season. We have quite a few significant contributors returning from the 2022-23 state tournament team,” said head coach Clay Carlton. “The experience and expectation of success is there, and I can’t wait to watch these girls play this season.”

Coming into the season, the players plan to utilize their past experiences to have an even stronger team than before.

“Just coming into this year already, having that experience with each other and that team chemistry, I think it’s gonna benefit us a lot on the court,” said senior Haley Kube.

The season won’t come without challenges, though. One of the main challenges is the loss of players from last year. 

“We lost a lot of key players, not only in our starting spots, but also in who contributed a lot of points into the game and who always made sure the other team’s best player didn’t have their best game against us,” said Kube.

Another challenge is the fact that there are only 13 girls on the team, and having limited players can cause some  struggles in practice.

“With drills, it’s hard to play five-on-five. Sometimes we’d have a coach play for a girl or there’s just not enough subs,” said senior Maura Tichota.  

On the other hand, the team can also benefit from the small number of players by being a close-bonded team. One player who has noticed this is junior Amelia Dieckman, who transferred to Yutan at the beginning of this school year.

“Coming from a bigger school, the positives from having less people is that you just get to know everyone a little bit better,” said Dieckman. “A team’s connection can make or break them. If we have a stronger bond, it can carry us and lift us up to hopefully have a better season.”

With the help of strong team bonds during this season, many of the girls have personal goals that will help them to accomplish big things in the season.

“I am very close to 1000 points. I’m a little bit above 200 away. So that’s very exciting for me,” said Tichota.

There are also more humble goals, like for the only freshman on the team, Emmy Tederman, who hopes to adjust from playing basketball in junior high to high school. 

“I’m a freshman, and I’m a lot smaller than all of the other girls. Basketball in high school is way different than junior high because there just a lot more pressure,” said Tederman. “I want to get better at shooting and just be better at basketball overall.”

Besides having many personal goals, the team’s main goal is to make it to the state tournament for the second year in a row. The team plans to start out playing hard and build onto their skills until they can reach their goals at the end of the season at the state tournament. 

“I hope the girls will play fast but under control, rebound on both sides of the floor and play extremely hard these first few games. We open with three really good opponents, so we will have to be playing well to win them all,” said Carlton. “I hope the girls continually get better throughout the season and are playing their best basketball in February.”

If this happens, the players may be able to achieve their biggest goal: to surpass last year’s success.

“Our main goal is to obviously make it back to the state tournament, but it’s also to make it past that first round and second round and then hopefully bring home a state title,” said Kube.