The West Fork girls basketball team has begun preseason practices. The Warhawks begin the new season working to rebuild depth, after eight seniors graduated from last year’s squad that went 20-4 and reached a Class 2A Regional Final. Head Coach Rodney Huber.
“We don’t have as much experience. We have four back and then we have a lot of young girls, a lot of freshmen, sophomores that are gonna have to play. They’re gonna have to step up and get some game experience. They’re gonna have to be in the mix and they’re gonna have to play through some mistakes and things like that,” says Huber. “In practice, I’ve really transitioned to more of a game-based approach in practices. We do a lot less blocked fundamental type of things and we really try to teach through playing the game.”
The Warhawks return three everyday rotation players from last season including senior Brylee Dickman, junior Evie Hitzhusen and sophomore Zada Huff. Dickman averaged six points and four rebounds per game last season. Hitzhusen averaged 3.7 points per game and tracked down 50 steals. Huff added a scoring threat from distance shooting 42.1 percent from three point range. Huber highlights strengths this year’s squad will look to capitalize on.
“Our returners are undersized but they’re quick and they can play aggressive defense. I think the identity and the style of play that we’ve kind of hung our hat on the last few years, will probably translate with this group but it’s gonna look a little different. We maybe don’t have quite the depth at least early on that we’ve had in years past. We’re gonna have to figure that out. Then figure out how much we can press and what our rotations gonna look like,” says Huber. “I do think one thing early on that we can maybe hang our hat on is we’re a very good outside shooting team. I expect us to shoot a lot of three pointers and be very high in the state for attempts. That’s a strength of ours and we’re going to play to it. That could be a little bit of an offensive identity that we go to.”
West Fork will host North Iowa for their season opener on Tuesday, November 25.
Full Interview with Head Coach Rodney Huber:
