MOUNTLAKE TERRACE — Coming off its first state tournament appearance in school history, Snohomish County Christian School’s girls basketball team is revved up for the 2004-05 season.
The team is taller and more confident than last year, according to coach Sasha Anderson.
“We are still riding high, excited and very eager,” Anderson said. “We are taking a lot of time this year to focus on goal setting. We don’t have any doubts that we will march back to the state tournament.”
The team graduated two seniors and had a high turnout of players. This year the Lions have their first freshmen-only team.
Snohomish County Christian School is led by a core of five returning players — point guard and co-captain Miracle Jackson, center Tara Holgate, forward Nicole Brekkaa, forward Emily Oakland and guard and co-captain Tegan Cathey.
Holgate and Jackson are the keys to the Lions’ success.
“We’ll rely on her (Holgate) a lot. She’s extremely hard to defend,” Cathey said. “With her now our guards can work a lot of the offense, even more than last year. We are hoping to shoot more and score more.”
Holgate has already signed a letter of intent to play at Eastern Washington.
Jackson, at 5-foot, is quick and has great ball handling skills, Anderson said.
“We have the tallest and shortest girls in the league,” Cathey said. “Miracle runs the game and Tara wins the game. “We expect to go back to where we ended last year and go further. We want to win some games at state and take home one of those eight trophies.”
In order to score the points they need to bring home a banner for the bare gym walls, the Lions plan on capitalizing on their speed.
“We do have a lot of speed,” Anderson said. “In the last few years we haven’t used that to our advantage. We want to be in great shape and out run our opponents. We want to run them into the ground.”
But what is most important for Anderson is supporting her players and making sure they know that they come first.
“For me before it’s about basketball, it’s about those girls,” said Anderson. “That is how we build rapport. They know we care about them first and foremost and that we want to help them. We want the team to be a source of encouragement and joy for them. It is an opportunity to influence and mentor and help them make healthy choices.”
With that kind of support from Anderson and the coaching staff, the Lions have an unshakable confidence.
“We are unstoppable. Nobody can break our ground when we are together,” Jackson said. “I’d say the only thing that could hold us back would be each other. We could get ourselves down. Right now our encouragement level is so high that totally builds us up, but if that drops we could not do as well.”
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