The theme for the 2009-10 Iowa City West High Trojans women’s basketball team will be an up-tempo game, said head coach B.J. Mayer.
“We’re not very tall,” Mayer said. “That’s going to be one of our weaknesses, defending people inside. One of the things we’re going to have to try to do is create that tempo to be chaotic and crazy, see if we can’t get people out of their element.”
Mayer fields a small and also young lineup after losing five seniors from a year ago, including current Iowa volleyball freshman Emma Krieger Kittle. But he has high hopes for the Trojans nonetheless as he inherits a junior class that went 20-1 as sophomores.
The juniors look to mix well with an experienced senior group of Kristin Fomon, Courtney Fritz, Mackenzie Reed, Sophie McDougall and Mallory Daily. Mayer also has been impressed with sophomore Tatum Klein, who he said is the team’s best defender.
Given the depth West has, Mayer plans to use that to his advantage in the fast-paced attack.
“We want to be able to just wear teams down,” he said. “We feel that with our ten kids, we’re going to be able to run kids in and out and not lose a lot of depth and intensity. That’s going to be the biggest challenge for us—playing as many young kids as we’re going to be playing. It’s going to have to keep taking steps forward and hopefully by the end of the year we’ll be playing as good as we can.”
The Trojans are coming off of a 16-6 season in 2008-09 in which they were defeated by Ankeny in the final game of sub-state play. The team learned some good lessons from the experience.
“It’s really difficult to get to the next level until you’ve been there once,” Mayer said. “At West, no one in the girls basketball program has ever been to the state tournament. So to get to that game before state I think was just a huge confidence builder. The more experience you have in those games, the better prepared you are, not only as a coaching staff, but the players who have been there.”
Getting to the tournament surely won’t be an easy path. West has to get through the competitive Mississippi Valley Conference schedule first that boasts top teams like Linn-Mar, Cedar Rapids Kennedy and, of course, the Trojans’ cross-town rival Iowa City High.
Still, that doesn’t take anything away from the goals that Mayer has for this team when it begins practice on November 9.
“We always want to expect a postseason run,” the coach said. “We feel that we play in the top conference in the state. Just by doing that, it gets us better competition and makes you improve in order to compete. Hopefully, when we get to tournament time, we will be playing our best basketball and get that good experience from playing in the Mississippi Valley Conference.”
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