By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff
Turnovers dogged both Mt. Edgecumbe High basketball teams over the weekend, the coaches say.
“We had a ton of turnovers all three games,” Lady Braves coach Kathy Forrester told the Sentinel.
The girls team went 2-1 in their season opener at the Grace Christian tourney in Anchorage. The Lady Braves marked a 39-28 victory over Grace Christian, and a 50-38 win over Seward, but fell in their final game to Barrow, 79-65.
Forrester noted that “we are lacking in our defense skills, which we will concentrate on when we return (from the holiday break).” She noted that Barrow in particular came prepared with a “spread-out offense and hot shooting.”
“We just need time to learn each other’s playing abilities,” she said. For many on her team, this was the first tournament playing as a group.
Mt. Egdecumbe all-stars Vernae Raymoth (left) and Kayla Kashevaroff
pose with their accolades, Saturday, at Grace Christian in Anchorage. (Photo provided by Kathy Forrester/MEHS)
Vernae Raymoth and Lizzy Allen stood out from the rest of the team.
“I’ve been watching Lizzy play ball the last two years, waiting for her confidence to kick in. It did this tournament!”
Raymoth, the coach said, was “the glue that gets us together... on and off the court. I couldn’t ask for a better team leader.”
First year basketball player and former volleyball captain Shayna Warnke Green impressed as well. “She was asking me questions about rules, (but she) played amazingly!” Forrester said.
Despite the team’s challenges on defense, Forrester praised Lisa Strom as a “defensive gnat. She is everywhere!”
In the final tally, Raymoth and Warnke Green made the All-Tourney team. Raymoth also won the Big Post contest, and Kayla Kashevaroff won the three-point contest.
The Lady Braves play again in January.
The turnover bug bit the boys team as well, coach Archie Young said.
The games were “typical for early year (play)... we had a lot of turnovers,” Young said. “Rebounding is something we have to work on.”
The boys team went 0-2 over the weekend, falling 63-47 to South Anchorage and 76-38 to Service, at Service High School in Anchorage.
Speaking about the game against Service, Young was emphatic.
“They hammered us.”
“We played good teams, but it was a pretty rough weekend for us,” he said.
Though the Braves have the rest of the year off, Young said that when his players return, “we just have to get better defensively, and get more comfortable playing with each other.”
Young added that his team’s conditioning was on target, a difficult achievement so early in the season.
The coach concluded that “we just need to get better all around.”
With the three-month season only a week old, the Braves have time to do so.
Mt. Edgecumbe is a boarding school, so students are at their homes across the state for the holidays, and aren’t practicing.
In contrast, both Sitka Wolves basketball teams play this weekend. The girls will be in Juneau, and the boys in Ketchikan.
The next MEHS games are set for 2020. The Lady Braves play at Ketchikan Jan. 10-11. The boys, in a whirlwind of travel, play Jan. 10-11 too, at Houston, Redington, and Thunder Mountain. The following weekend, Jan.15-18, both MEHS teams play at home for the Edgecumbe Invitational.
