The girls tie their shoes, their laces slipping through their fingers as they hear the sound of basketballs bouncing around them. As they step onto the court, they see their opponents: they are tall, they are strong, they are good, they are experienced. And they are in High School.
Now, for the first time, most of the team can relate to their opponents because they, too, are in high school. The news of their recent success has been buzzing around campus, but their story is not as simple as the other teams at WIS. This Girls Varsity Basketball team began with a group of girls who were willing to play on varsity in sixth grade.
Freshman Irene de Las Casas has been playing basketball since fourth grade and expected to join a normal middle school basketball team when she walked onto the Tregaron campus, but that wasn’t what happened. Girls’ Varsity Basketball head coach Brian Brennan gave her and five others a choice: make a middle school team or go directly to varsity.
“We decided that we wanted to play varsity,” de Las Casas said.
This decision would prove to be challenging at the start, but incredibly rewarding. The first season brought games with large losses as the team was adjusting to age, size and speed of play.
Freshman Megan Yost underlines this point, noting the time it took before the scores were reversed.
“Playing [on] varsity in Middle School was a very humbling experience,” Yost said. “We would usually lose by over 50 points each game and it wasn’t until eighth grade where we finally started to win games.”
Although it is easy to focus on the difference in age, the real opponent the team faced was the disparity in their ability and their opponents’.
“When you are playing you don’t think about their age but their skill,” Yost said. “It didn’t feel like they were older, just that they were way better and bigger.”
Despite the disparity in size and skill, the team never let those ideas get to their heads.
“[Losing] didn’t discourage us because we knew that it was normal because we were sixth graders,” De Las Casas said. “We never gave up.”
Their mentality isn’t only apparent to teammates, but also to their coaches. Assistant Coach Emma Golden saw this mentality clearly with the team.
“The girls handle this really well,” Golden said. “They’re mature players.”
Instead of focusing on things that they couldn’t change, like their size, they turned to things they could: skill. These girls stand out from other varsity teams because they’ve been playing together for longer and have had extra time to develop at and understand the varsity level.
The girls also have the advantage of playing together outside of school, building their chemistry, which makes the varsity season feel natural. The team is also able to read each other based on body language and can expect plays. So, drills to develop their tactics and agility were emphasized to give them a competitive edge.
“Playing these teams has taught us not to be intimidated by age, [but] to always look forward,” Junior Mia Maktabi said. “We know we can’t always rely on size or strength, so we focus on skill, speed and communication.”
This determination and work have become evident in their recent results. It is easy to see the disadvantages they face, but the team has harnessed their strengths to stand out from their competition.
“Us being the youngest, and probably the smallest, we are a lot quicker than most of the team, and we can outrun all of them,” de Las Casas said. “Most of our points come out of layups from fast breaks.”
Beyond size and speed, the WIS team also has seven years to improve and gain confidence instead of just four.
“We have been playing varsity for three years and we still have four more to go while our opponents who have been playing for three years only have one,” Yost said.
Seeing the struggling program, Coach Brennan was drawn to help it grow. Brennan has attributed this success not only to the time the team have spent together, but also the girls and parents respond to the situation.
“Our kids enjoy the process of getting better all year round,” Brennan said. “The kids and parents have trusted our coaching staff during this unprecedented run.”
Golden also highlights the importance of the girls on the team in how they have reacted to this.
“I think the girls are very adaptable and coachable, which means they are willing to try new things and just play hard,” Golden said.
It is clear that not only did the girls respond well to their coaching, but also that their coaches also created an environment where mistakes were turned into motivation instead of embarrassment.
“At the start, Coach [Brennan] would always say it wasn’t about winning games but more about growing together,” Maktabi said.
While going up against a senior a foot taller than you in sixth grade can be daunting, the team has never let that get to them. Through the bruises and long practices, they have made a program that thrives on grit and hard work. The girls are the definition of a team: they work as a unit to win.
Although older opponents have been a struggle, they have had to deal with challenges off the court, too. Despite their 14-3 record season so far, support for them has not been there. Like many girls’ teams on campus, they watch on as crowds are full for some sports, but almost empty for others.
“The biggest struggle I faced was not having support from teachers or other peers because we were the only girls’ basketball team and we were only six people,” de Las Casas said.
This lack of support goes beyond not feeling cheers from friends, but it can also impact how the team feels about themselves.
“Even though we won the championship last year, not a lot of people knew about it, so it was kind of like our team wasn’t significant,” de Las Casas said.
The Girls’ Varsity Basketball team’s story is more than just the success we see today. Their story is about girls who showed up every day when it wasn’t easy. They learned what it was like to lose, but also what it meant to keep going. They show what it is like to stick it out and to work for something with a group of people because you know you can achieve it. When you’re focused on turning your strengths into something exceptional, your time is spent on improvement instead of dwelling on every obstacle that stands in your way.
The girls’ basketball program built itself up by building off of each other, but they were largely alone, so maybe we can support these girls a little more so that the rest of their journey does not have to be alone. Let us celebrate these student athletes who inspire the WIS community beyond the hardwood court floors.
Their wins are more than the sweat from this season, but they are the accumulation of hard work and consistency for years. While they may have been the small team that lost by 50 points, that’s not who they are anymore. The team and the coaching staff have built a program that wins.
“We are now the ones beating teams by 50 points,” Yost said.
By Cate Taylor
