Columbus East’s Jenna Guse directs her teammates against East Central in the first round of the sectional at Shelbyville, Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2023.
The Republic file photo
For the first time in more than 20 years, Columbus East has a new girls basketball coach.
Kaitlyn Phillips, a former player and assistant coach at Whiteland, took over for Danny Brown, who retired at the end of last season. Phillips had a chance to get her first good look at her new team when coaches were able to work with their teams in game and practice settings in the month of June.
“It definitely was great to see them all play competitively,” Phillips said. “We have a lot of multi-sport athletes, which is great. We all kind of came together for the first time, so that was good to see.”
The Olympians played 14 games in June. They played in Tuesday night league at Triton Central, played in shootouts at Franklin College and Corydon Central and had a scrimmage at Hauser, which is coached by Kyle Shipp, who Phillips played for and coached under at Whiteland.
“We’re definitely still in the process of learning the new system and things like that, so we spent a lot of games learning the basics and learning each other rather than focusing on wins and losses too much,” Phillips said. “We’ve had several conversations with the girls how most of the teams that we play are going to be older than us and will have more varsity experience than us, so we have to outwork them before game time outside of practice doing things on their own, finding a way to pick a ball up when they’re in volleyball season, all of that stuff.”
Phillips had 24 players at one point or another during the summer period and usually split up the available players between varsity and JV for most of the games.
Senior Jenna Guse is the lone returning full-time starter. Guse played point guard at the end of last season, but Phillips is looking to move her into more of a scoring role. Sophomore Kenzi Cheek, who was the JV point guard last season, could fill that spot at the varsity level.
“Our goal is to get her comfortable in that role so Jenna has more scoring opportunities,” Phillips said.
Senior Messiah Trapp was a part-time starter last season and played with the team this summer, but her father recently landed a job in South Carolina, and her family may be moving. Another senior who saw playing time last season, Victoria Cuhadar, did not play this summer because of an ankle injury.
Junior Kimberly Carothers, who battled injuries last season, is the only other returner with varsity experience. Senior Savanna Sullivan, a softball and volleyball player, has not played basketball in high school, but is giving it a try.
Sophomore Brelyn Pool, who played JV last winter, saw significant time with the varsity this summer. Junior Ellie Schlaudroff and sophomore Ella Anthis also played with the varsity in June.
“You can tell how invested they are in learning, so they’ve all done a pretty good job with that,” Phillips said. “Most of the things that we’re teaching them were in a one-minute timeout or a three-minute halftime. We didn’t have a lot of practices, so being able to listen to those things during timeouts and apply them was good to see. Their skill level improved a ton, and I think their basketball IQ really improved, as well.”
