This story is sponsored by: American Family Insurance – Randy LeMoine Agency, LLC
By Paul Lecker
MarshfieldAreaSports.com
SPENCER – With the loss of four of its top five scorers to graduation, the Spencer girls basketball team is taking a new approach and looking to use a faster-paced offense to lead the way.
Spencer returns five players from last year’s team that finished 13-10 and 9-7 in the Cloverbelt Conference East Division. The Rockets suffered a first-round loss in the WIAA Division 4 playoffs to Wabeno/Laona.
Gone to graduation are Sydney Kind, a first-team all-Cloverbelt East performer, led the Rockets with 15.1 points per game last season, center Macie Weber (7.7 ppg), and guards Nadia King (4.7 ppg) and Kallie Reckner (3.8 ppg.).
Junior Lexi Baehr is the Rockets’ top returning scorer after averaging 10.7 points per contest a year ago as a sophomore. She piled up 32 points in Spencer’s season-opening win last Friday against Granton.
Senior guards Courtney Buss and Jessica Becker, and post players Liz Endreas, a senior, and Sabrina Vircks, a junior, also return. Guards Kaily Northup and McKenna Brecht will join the varsity.
“We lost most of our scoring from last year to graduation,” fourth-year head coach Brian Abel said. “We will need new people to step up and become scorers for us to be successful. We will also have to be better defensively along with being more aggressive.”
That aggressive defensive approach will hopefully lead to easy offense.
“This year we are going to transition more into a transition game and try to get up and down the court more,” Abel said. “Our expectation is to compete in every game and continue to get better as we head into playoffs.”