BY BRIAN FEESSouthern Tier Sports Report
SOUTHPORT — The Notre Dame girls’ basketball took a big step a year ago, and now they are excited as they returned to the court for the first week of practices this week.
“Exciting, very excited,” Notre Dame coach Cara Hope said. “Excited to get started and excited with the gorup we have coming back and some newcomers coming in.”
It was a big step last year, and now the Crusaders are ready for even more.
“I think the girls are really excited to get started,” Hope said. “This year we want to take it to the next level. Last year we had a winning season. This year we want to take it even further and we want to have more of a defensive mindset this year.
“They went from the year before, I think they told me winning three or four games to winning 11 last year and coming home with the Josh Palmer, our bracket, tournament championship, so they are really excited.”
And, there is a lot of experience back from last year’s team.
“I feel great about them,” Hope said. “We have Kalysta (DeMark) coming back and Jhamariah (Maxwell) and Payton (Sutryk) as seniors to lead the team and we have a couple others, Sadie Potter and Emily Coseo, and a couple newcomers coming in.”
And, all the players have put plenty of work in.
“A lot of them have been working in the offseason,” Hope said. “Playing AAU ball and just getting better and better.”
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PHOTOS BY BRIAN FEES
PHOTO GALLERY FROM PRACTICE:
