By TYLER HENRY
Salina Post contributor
The Ell-Saline girl's basketball team will look to flip the script after a 6-14 finish to their 2020-21 campaign.
The Cardinals will be under the direction of head coach Bill Gies, who enters his second season at the helm.
Ell-Saline graduated several seniors last year but retained quite a bit of experience, with a starting lineup that will feature upperclassmen almost exclusively.
G- Raynee Hardesty (Sr)
G- Lani Richards (Jr) or Bayleigh Schnieder (So)
F- Sadie Bradley (Sr)
F- Raleigh Kramer (Sr)
F- Keala Wilson (Jr)
The Cardinals will also look for big minutes off the bench from Reygan Shrock, Brin Hecker and Ally Richards
Ahead of the new season, we had a chance to catch up with Coach Gies and get his thoughts on his team.
Q: Overall, what were your thoughts on last season?
A: “We started out really well but we played some teams that were down. We lost seven games by five or fewer so we had a lot of games that very well could have gone the other way. Because of that we weren’t totally discouraged by that record.”
Q: How excited are you guys to be mostly back to normal this year?
A: “It is awesome to be back in a more normal scene. We all struggled last year and it’s so much nicer to just go play and I think everyone around us is looking forward to that as well.”
Q: Coming into this season, what would you say is this team’s biggest strength
A: “Our biggest strength is our speed. We’re so much faster than we were last year and it’s not that we were slow, these kids have just gotten a lot stronger. Our press will be a lot more active and we’re going to really try to use our defense to create offense”
Q: What are the biggest question marks for you as we approach the first few games.”
A: “We have to limit our turnovers and we’re not as worried about taking bad shots but we want to be comfortable in the knowledge that the shot we’re taking is the right one for us so we can knock it down. We’ve been working quite a bit to improve our shooting percentages and a lot of that comes down to confidence.”
Q: What are the expectations and goals that this team has placed on themselves this year?
A: “We want to flip our record so we’re trying to go from 6-14 to 14-6 to give ourselves a shot at sub-state. If you can win that first game anything can happen and every year there are teams that get hot and make it to the state tournament. We also want to win some of these tougher games on our schedule. Our league has the #1 team in the state and we want to be in the top half of our league by the end of the year.”
The Cardinals will open up their season hosting the Sacred Heart Knights on Friday, December 3rd.
For more on Ell-Saline hoops stay tuned to the Salina Post.