For most basketball-crazed high school players, the summer months offer few breaks.
Nearly all of coach Dan Taylor’s returning Meadowdale girls basketball players spend the off-season playing for their respective select teams. Most of them play year-round, including a few weeks they spend playing summer league for Meadowdale.
“Most of my returners play year-round,” said Taylor, who’ll begin his third season at Meadowdale this winter. “They always come back better than they left. That’s a good thing. They never have a chance to really get out of shape. But they also need to get rest. They’re teenagers after all and they need some down-time as well.”
The Mavericks have nearly 30 players showing up for summer league, 15-20 of whom are from the freshman or junior varsity program. They have competed in four tournaments thus far, including the highly competitive Oregon City Tournament, just outside of Portland. Fifty-four teams from Oregon, Washington, California and Idaho participated. The Mavericks, who had all their returning players from last season for the trip, finished second after losing to Oregon City in the championship game. Meadowdale finished with a 5-1 record.
“This is a huge tournament and the kids just love it,” Taylor said. “There are so many talented and competitive teams there. It’s important to play well against teams we never play. I had my entire team and they played really well.”
The Mavericks will conclude summer league this weekend at the Lake Washington tournament against a few teams they wouldn’t typically see during the season, including Holy Names, Eastlake, Ballard and Issaquah.
“It’s good to play against teams we wouldn’t play during the year,” Taylor said. “It can be very beneficial because we can run new stuff and old stuff. And most of my varsity players are playing with their select teams, traveling in and out of state so it gives us a chance to see how some of the younger players play at the varsity level.”
In all, the Mavericks will have played nearly 60 games when summer league concludes. For Taylor, it’s been a successful summer season.
“Our goal this summer was to build team chemistry,” Taylor said. “We’ve girls who leave (via graduation) and girls that are coming in new. It gives us a chance to see and help the younger girls who don’t play for select teams.”
In addition to tournament play, both the girls and boys basketball teams put on a summer camp for kids from kindergarten through ninth grade.
“We teach fundamentals, play games, it’s a lot of fun,” Taylor said. “Our entire basketball program puts on an excellent camp. It also gives us a chance to raise money for the program.”
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