Girls have high hopes this hoops season
Alexa Friske reaches for the ball during practice last week.
The Columbia Falls girls basketball team is looking for good things from a squad of veteran players.
“I feel really optimistic,” first-year coach Jeremy Grilley said last week. “We have a great group of girls.”
While this is Grilley’s first year coaching the varsity squad after coach Cary Finberg retired last season, he’s no stranger to Wildcat hoops, having won a state championship in 2003 as a player. He also coached junior high ball for nine years and was an assistant under Finberg for a season as well as an assistant under head boys coach Chris Finberg (Cary’s nephew) for a season as well.
Grilley thinks this squad should make it to the state tourney this year. He has eight solid players, he said, which include Emalee Alton, Onnika Lawrence, Addy Bowler, Kierra Kemppainen, Rylee Sweeney, Alanis Peterson, Taryn Borgen and a newcomer, Maddy Barker, who recently moved into the district.
“We have a real opportunity to do great things,” he said.
Grilley is assisted by TJ Middlesworth, who will coach JV and Dulcie Berube, who will coach the froshmore team.
“All three teams are going to be pretty successful this year,” Grilley predicted. “They’re really coachable and have bought in from day one.”
Many of the players played spring ball at open gyms against the women’s league, which definitely brought a more physical element to the game.
While they don’t have a home game in December, there will be a blue and white scrimmage Dec. 7 at the high school, with girls playing at 10 a.m. and the boys at noon.
They open the season against Fergus County at the Western A tip-off tourney in Frenchtown Dec. 13 and then play Butte Central the next day.
Both games will be good tests.
The next weekend doesn’t get any easier with Hardin and Miles City at a tourney in Lewistown.
Their home opener Jan. 9 is against Frenchtown, who has one of the best players in the entire state in Mason Quinn.
Last season the Kats finished 10-11 overall and lost to Browning in the consolation final at the divisional tourney.