The girls varsity basketball team is off to a fast start  in their 2017-2018 campaign. This year so far they are 7-2, with their only losses coming against Caledonia and Benilde-St. Margaret’s.

Before the loss last Tuesday to Caledonia, the team was on a 6 game winning streak to start off the season, despite the young line-up.

There are two seniors, 4 freshman, and a whole lot of underclassmen on the team. The team graduated 5 seniors, and senior Josie Huelskamp knew it was time for a new group to step up.

“The younger girls are doing great. They’ve realized that they need to step up after losing 5 seniors last year, but I think they have risen to the occasion,” Huelskamp said.

When coming to the varsity level, it is tough at first keeping up with the pace as a young player, but that’s exactly what long time coach Pat Bowlin wants his team to do.

“We play full court press and are very aggressive, and have been playing outstanding defense, that is without a doubt been the key to our early success.”

Another thing that has been a key to early success, was the momentum they took from their big second round playoff game wi last season, against defending state champ PEM.

“We saw the reality of being able to compete with nearly any team, including the defending state champions”, Huelskamp said.

Going into the road game against conference foe Caledonia, Bowlin thought experience might be an issue.

“The team that plays with most composure will win the game.” Cotter dropped to Caledonia 54-48.

His words proved prophetic as the young Ramblers failed to pull out a tough road game that was close throughout.  Gaining the knack of winning close games will be key.

The girls and there coach, have high hopes this year, Both Bowlin and Huelskamp said that there goals are to win the Three Rivers Conference, and go deep into the section playoffs.

Before they can get there, they have a few things to work on, “We sometimes have scoring droughts where we don’t score for 3-4 minutes, we need to find ways to reduce those droughts. The best way is to create some turnovers on defense and get more offensive rebounds,” Bowlin said

The girls will be back in action on December 19, at Fillmore Central.