South St. Louis County News

St. Louis Call Newspapers

South St. Louis County News

St. Louis Call Newspapers

South St. Louis County News

St. Louis Call Newspapers

Oakville girls seek redemption in 2011-2012

By ROBERT CHALUPNY

For the Call

After going 10-15 last season and being upset by rival Mehlville in the first round of district play, the Oakville Senior High School girls’ basketball team will seek redemption in the 2011-2012 season.

But Aaron Bosch, who will be leading the Tigers in his second season as head coach, said that redemption will not come without overcoming several challenges, most notably experience.

“We graduated eight seniors last year, so we only have three girls back from last year’s varsity team and only one of them played at all,” he said. “So we are very young, very athletic. We’ve got a lot of talent in the younger ages. I’ve got two freshmen on varsity, two sophomores on varsity, but again neither one of them has ever played a varsity game before.

“So I think early on we’ll probably struggle with experience, but I think by the end of the year we will probably be a pretty decent team.”

The three seniors Bosch is expecting to emerge this season are Lauren Fussell, returning point guard; Erin Allen, who had spot duty as a guard last season; and Hannah Cook, who has faced injuries.

Bosch told the Call speed is his team’s biggest weapon going into this season, but his players are not “super tall.”

“… I think we are going to be able to get up and down the floor a lot,” he said. “I think we’re pretty deep. We will do a lot of pressing, do a lot of fast breaking (and ) try to get a lot of easy baskets. I think we might be able to wear some people down a little bit.”

Experience is going to be an uphill battle, but Bosch believes his squad will overcome it.

“Obviously, our weakness is going to be our lack of experience,” he said. “If we get stuck in a half-court game, we don’t really have anybody yet that has figured out their scoring roles.

“So we will probably struggle to score in a half-court game early on until some of these girls start to figure out who the scorers are and what their roles are … And our schedule’s really tough.”

The Tigers were set to take their first test of the season against Visitation on Monday — after the Call went to press.

More to Discover