Prep girls basketball: Solon Springs rebuilds after six graduate

Nov. 27—Head coach: Sarah Smith, third season

Assistant coach: Alana Hill

Returning players: Solon Springs returns no full-time starters from last season, but has four players who played significant minutes and made spot starts throughout the season, all of whom are juniors this year including Ella Postl, Paetyn Simenson and Hannah and Lydia and Polkoski.

New faces: Sophomore Kendall Nelson and freshman Madison Jacobs.

Key departures: Kyra Latvala, Claire Holmstrom, Gretchen Hammond, Izzy Molina and Bailey Monson.

Leadership and impact players: "This season everyone is going to be stepping up into more active roles," Smith said. "Graduating a senior class of six, who many started varsity as freshmen, has opened up the opportunity to have some new leaders on the team this year. Being a team of six, everyone will have an active role on the floor and get a lot of minutes. Because of this small group, the leadership will be shared by all."

Strengths of this year's team: "Having a small number can be a blessing and curse," Smith said. "Being that we have six we are able to introduce many concepts and get through a lot of reps at practice. This will help us have a balanced approach to games where all six players can fill any of the roles that are needed of them. All six of these girls are hard working and want to be better basketball players, making it easy to coach and plan around them instead of a key player or two."

Challenges this season: "Injuries," Smith said. "We have a few players coming off significant injuries, so we are working on getting stronger and making sure they are taking care of their bodies to prevent any future injuries. With such a low number of players, we really have to make sure we are conditioned and injury free."

With an extremely small varsity roster comprised of players who weren't full-time starters last season, Smith acknowledged that Solon Springs will likely make the 2023-24 campaign a rebuilding year. Last season, Solon Springs finished 18-9 overall and played in a regional championship game.

Goals for the season: "This year's focus is rebuilding after losing so many seniors last year," Smith said. "The returning players have seen significant amounts of varsity minutes, now able to shine with more minutes available to them. We are looking long-term at learning things that will help them become better basketball players as the year progresses. Numbers over the whole conference are in a dip so we are on a pretty equal playing field in conference play. For our playoff run, the region we are assigned to has drastically changed, so it will be scouting and learning about teams that we typically don't play."