The Dike-New Hartford girls basketball team has begun preseason practices and has two returning starters from last year. Head Coach Matt Dove says juniors Payton Foster and Kailyn Meester have put themselves in position to be leaders after showing strong growth in the offseason.
“They were great for us this summer,” Dove says. “They definitely bring back a lot of experience from last year. Payton has been a gym rat for us the last two years. Kailyn got a lot of really good experience last year, and you got Rylee Reicks who came off the bench and gave us good minutes as well. So hoping to keep building on that and then hoping some of the other kids that we’ve got, we can just get them some good experience and bring them up to speed.”
Foster led the team with 11 points per game last year, but the next three leading scorers graduated. Rylee Reicks and Mallory Petersen are back after being key members of the rotation last year, and the rest of the roster saw sporadic minutes.
Unlike the last several seasons, the team won’t play a game until December. But Dove looks forward to some scrimmages they’ll take part in to prepare for opening night.
“I’m really happy with how our schedule lays out this year. Last few years, we’ve always played a game before Thanksgiving, and that kind of puts you in a crunch for time, trying to get prepared for that. So thankfully don’t have to worry about that until after Thanksgiving. But we do have our jamboree over in Jesup, the second Thursday of the season. We’ll have our Pride Scrimmage at home against North Linn, who will be a really good team, somebody you have to prepare for and definitely gives us a sense of urgency when we get back to practice, knowing you’ve got a good team like that coming to Dike to play. It kind of gives us a little bit of time to play with some stuff. But once we get into it, it’s full go right from the get-go.”
They’ll begin the season by hosting Hudson on Tuesday, December 2.
