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Numbers a problem for
Lady Wave
First year coach has his hands full
By George Starks
GREENVILLE - “It’s very discouraging,” said Lady Wave basketball coach
Dave McFeely talking about the number of basketball players at
Greenville.
Not getting hired until August, the first year Greenville coach is
faced with a ton of problems. The biggest being numbers.
“We only had 14 kids come out for girls basketball, so in the Celina
tournament, we’re not even going to have a junior-varsity team,” said
McFeely. “We had a scrimmage the other night and one of our girls
sprained her ankle and she’s on crutches. So now we’re down to 13
players.”
McFeely comes in as no stranger to girls basketball. Last year, he was
the head coach at Edison State and before that, was the girls coach at
New Bremen for five seasons.
He resigned from Edison in early June looking to full retirement, but
took the job at Greenville. Mcfeely will feature just two seniors in
Jenna Dowler and Kelsey Tester, both three year letter winners.
“Both of these kids are really good leaders,” McFeely said. “Jenna
shoots the ball well and is returning as the highest scorer from last
year with 110 points scored so we are looking for a lot from her. She
can handle the ball well and she will probably be running a lot of the
points for us. Kelsey is a 6-1 forward/post player and she is looking
really solid in the three or four position. They are both good leaders
in practice and they are buying into the changes we’ve made.”
Along with his two seniors, McFeely will feature just three juniors:
Tara Guillozet, Megan Galloway and Erin Albright.
“Tara is up from the junior varsity team from last year and will play a
guard position for us. She is a very good defensive player and is very
quick but struggles on the offensive end,” McFeely said.
“Megan is the post player from last year and she has been really strong
in the pre-season. She is 6-2 and she went up against a 6-3 girl from
Minster and held her own. I came from the MAC and to be able to say
that you hold your own against a player from that conference is saying
something. That’s why we will scrimmage St. Henry and New Bremen as
well as Owttawa-Glandorf.
“These are very strong basketball schools and with three of them being
MAC schools, the kids will show me a lot in those scrimmages. At 6-0,
Erin will see some time in the post and at a forward position. We are
going to start 6-2, 6-1 and 6 foot with two 5-9 guards so we have some
decent size.”
Coming in off the bench will be sophomore Haleigh Luce; she will be the
first one in off the bench for McFeely.
“She has a nice shot,” McFeely said of Luce. “We have 5-11 sophomore
Karlee Lennon and sophomore Paige Tester who was down on j-v a year ago
and played well.”
With a young, inexperienced team, McFeely said he would like to see
Greenville in the top three in the GWOC North.
“I think if we can stay healthy, we have a shot at being in the top two
or three in the conference,” McFeely said. “I want us to play strong
defense and if we can do those two things, I think we’ll be in the
thick of the conference race.”
Greenville will open up at Celina in the OVISCO Classic this Friday.
That tournament will feature Versailles, Celina and Wayne as well as
Greenville.
McFeely said in closing, “with 360 girls in the upper three grades, we
should have 10 percent of those girls playing basketball. Having 14 is
unacceptable. Russia is one of the smallest D-IV schools in the state
and 29 girls went out for basketball there. Something is wrong here and
we need to find out what it is.”
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