Photo by Ted Melton.
Head coach Laura Casey is encouraged by her team’s depth and quickness in the 2016-17 season.
The Vestavia Hills High School girls basketball team is looking to begin reaping the benefits of last year’s growing pains.
Head coach Laura Casey had a young team last year, which was never more evident than the period of time leading scorer Jessica Compton was sidelined due to injury.
That forced a handful of sophomores into big minutes.
“Last year, we had a bunch of sophomores that played a lot of minutes, that in a normal [season] we’d hope for them not to have to play,” Casey said. “With a year under their belt, they are certainly much more poised and ready for the kind of competition they’re going to see.”
Taylor Wilson, Sarah Cain, Olivia Starnes, Maggie Mince and Lia DiGuglielmo are now juniors. The growth experienced by that group being thrown into the fire has Casey optimistic, despite still considering her squad relatively young.
“As far as varsity basketball experience, we’re pretty young, but we are a lot quicker than we were last year,” she said. “We’re excited about the things we can do defensively with that quickness. We’re not real big, but we’re a little faster.”
Casey said the team has one player an inch or two shy of six feet, but other than that, does not have a great deal of size. Because of that, Vestavia Hills will bring a slightly different look to the floor, but one that has Casey excited, since that quickness on defense lends itself to her coaching goals.
“We want to play very aggressive, hard-nosed defense,” Casey said. “Certainly, we believe defense is what wins you championships.”
She said that defensive mentality sticks year-in and year-out, regardless of the makeup of the roster. But a smaller, faster group of players this year will allow the Lady Rebels to play to its strengths on offense.
“Offensively, we adapt to what we have. You can really play a lot of the same defense, but on offense you have to adapt. This year, we want to push the ball up the floor a little bit more and play faster. We have kids that have the ability to drive and get to the basket.”
The Lady Rebels have a pair of seniors in returning starter Jasmyn White and Ramsay transfer Aysiah Hill, who Casey said would be “very helpful” this year.
A pair of underclassmen in Courtney Milner and Anna Wood will provide additional scoring punch for Vestavia Hills, and Grace Uldrich and Maddie Crane must contribute as well to allow the team to reach its full potential.
That’s what Casey emphasized about the depth of her roster.
“They all play. It’s sort of fun for us [as coaches], because we can sub in and out at our leisure and get the same kind of play all the time. That’s really helpful for us,” Casey said.
Casey played at Vestavia Hills, so she understands the inner workings and expectations of the Lady Rebels basketball program, something that will not deviate from season to season.
“Our goal is to get better every day,” she said. “We have the philosophy that we want to play ourselves. Playing to our standard all the time is something young players sometimes have a hard time doing, but our focus is to help them play through the mistakes.”
