GIRLS BBALL | MLT coach: Team lacks maturity, scoreboard shows it

Published 7:30 pm Tuesday, December 6, 2011

MOUNTLAKE TERRACE — Be it a class midterm or a Thursday night practice, Mountlake Terrace girls’ basketball coach Dave Brophy sticks with a simple philosophy: Study hard and good grades are likely to follow. The same goes for basketball practice: Show up, compete and the victories will come.

“Practices are homework and the games are tests,” Brophy said.

So far, the team has missed the mark on the court. Last season the Hawks finished 2-12 in league and 4-16 overall. Since 2007, the Hawks are 11-52, and have failed to win more than four games in any of Brophy’s three previous seasons.

“It’s been frustrating,” Brophy said. “My teams have shown a lack of maturity. I never know who is going to show up for practice. So it’s hard to plan our practices. And it’s unfair for the players who show up every day. And it’s especially hard to scrimmage.”

First-year varsity player and the Hawks’ only senior, Monea Kerr, is just one of three upperclassmen lining the roster. She’s the team’s 5-foot-10 starting center. But like most of the players, she lacks invaluable varsity experience. As a freshman she played on the “C” team and started on the junior varsity squad her sophomore and junior years. It wasn’t a talent issue that kept her off the varsity team. It was a lack of commitment.

“I was one of those girls who goofed off too much so I didn’t make the varsity team,” Kerr said. “But I realized that I am the only senior on the team and I needed to start taking basketball more seriously. Being the oldest, I have to be someone who the younger girls can look up to. This year I am taking it more seriously and Coach Brophy appreciates that. And I am getting better and the game is much more fun when you improve.”

According to Brophy, Kerr’s attitude adjustment has been significant. He speaks highly of her athleticism, her rebounding skills and her quickness. But while Kerr has seen the light, there are others who are still in the dark.

“The girls have to want to participate and obviously we have girls who don’t want to participate,” Brophy said. “But we are not concentrating on them. We’re concentrating on the ones who come out to the gym every day.”

After losing their season opener to Cascade on Nov. 29, more than a few players missed the following day’s practice.

“I just don’t get it,” Brophy said. “Here we are one night after a game and there are players who didn’t show up for practice tonight. I just don’t get it.”

With four seniors lost to graduation and 10 underclassmen in the program, most coaches would consider this a rebuilding year. But Brophy doesn’t see it that way.

“It’s hard to rebuild if you only win four games,” Brophy said. “If we were 10-10 it would be a rebuilding season. So, I don’t consider this a rebuilding year. We are just trying to improve.”

Despite what has been an ineffective coaching stint the past three seasons, Brophy has a young team and the opportunity to mold what may be a promising underclassmen group, beginning with freshmen guards Samantha Romanowksi, Shaian Pagaling and sophomore Maddy Kristjanson.

At 5-foot-9, Kristjanson cracked the line up as a freshman midway through the season after then-sophomore Takara Mitsui left the team to play soccer. That may be the best thing that happened to the Hawks last season. Kristjanson proved to be an all-around player.

“Maddy is clearly our best athlete,” Brophy said. “She has great quickness. She can cut to the basket and she’s quick off the dribble. And she’s got a lot of heart and she’s very coachable, that says a lot.”

Along with her on-the-court talents, Kristjanson also brings the kind of infectious optimism that a young team needs in order to improve.

“We are a young group, but we are very talented,” she said. “We are improving every day. I am not saying we’re going to state, but we have the talent to make the playoffs.”

Fielding one of the youngest teams in the league, Brophy does have a returning starter in junior Taylor Smith, who is the team’s pure shooter. She has deep range shooting the ball, plays solid defense and is the team’s most physical player, he said.

“Overall, our goal is to just keep growing,” Brophy said. “We want to be competitive and I think the game against Cascade proves that. But we need the maturity to play physical because we’re in a physical league with Shorecrest, Meadowdale and Lynnwood.”

So far, the growth process has been slow. The Hawks blew an 11-point lead in the first half in their loss to Cascade, and then surrendered 72 points in a loss to Lynnwood Dec. 3, marking their 11th consecutive loss since late in December last season. Their last victory came on Dec. 31, 2010, in a two-point victory over Tyee High School (Sea-Tac).

The Hawks host Everett, beginning at 7:15 p.m. Dec. 7.