Columbus East’s Kenzie Cheek drives to the basket against Silver Creek at Jan. 23 Columbus East High School.
The Republic file photo
It’s not a huge secret that this will be a rebuilding girls basketball season at Columbus East.
The Olympians lost all five starters and six of their top seven players from a team that went 5-18 last season, including 2-4 in the Hoosier Hills Conference. With only two seniors and just one player with significant varsity experience, East will be looking to improve as the season goes along under second-year coach Kaitlyn Phillips.
“I think definitely, we’re focused on getting better every day, working hard, controlling what we can control,” Phillips said. “Then, we’ll have game goals each week such as limiting turnovers or things like that just to measure where we’re at, not necessarily that are tied to win or a loss. We’re holding them accountable while making sure our expectations are realistic.”
Phillips was encouraged by what she saw out of her team over the summer and fall.
“Our summer was solid,” Phillips said. “We played a lot of games, which was our goal, just because we have so many new varsity kids. Our fall was good. We had a lot of kids in fall sports. We had a decent amount of kids at our workouts, and then adding in the volleyball kids and the cross-country kids the last two weeks brought a lot of energy to our practices.”
Kenzie Cheek, a 5-foot-6 junior, started some games last season and often was the first player off the bench for East. She will share the point guard duties with 5-5 sophomore Lola Watkins.
“They both have different strengths, so it just depends on other teams’ strategies,” Phillips said. “They both feel comfortable off and on the ball and running the show.”
Kimberly Carothers, a 5-10 senior, saw a little varsity action. As the tallest Olympian, she will start inside.
“She’s also one of our best shooters, so we’re going to extend her as much as we can,” Phillips said. “We don’t have a lot of height, so we know other teams’ are going to be putting their tallest players on her. So we’ll be looking to use her athleticism against the other teams’ bigs.”
Battling for the other two starting spots and filling out the varsity roster are 5-7 junior Ella Anthis, 5-7 senior Ellie Schlaudroff, 5-5 junior Averie Graham and 5-4 sophomore Krea Martin.
“We are hoping to shoot the ball pretty well,” Phillips said. “We’re definitely going to be guard heavy, so we’ll be looking to spread some teams out and get to the rim that way.”
East opens the season Tuesday at Purdue Poly Englewood. Phillips knows the inexperience level will be something the Olympians will have to overcome.
“It’s just not something that we can control or fix, so it’s not something that we talk about too much,” Phillips said. “We had a scrimmage on Wednesday (at Jennings County), so it was good to see how they responded to playing against another team. A lot of them played AAU ball over the summer, so they got to play against a higher level.”
