Red Hawk girls basketball to rely on big senior class

The Gale-Ettrick-Trempealeau High School girls basketball team might have played the fewest games of any varsity program across the state a year ago.

So as the Red Hawks open the season this week, an added excitement comes for the senior-heavy group. G-E-T played at Cochrane-Fountain City on Tuesday and host Melrose-Mindoro on Thursday.

Coach Louis Hurd said the team plans to rely on its eight seniors, who have continued to improve and work in the offseason after a 2020-21 season that ended with a 4-5 record (4-2 Coulee Conference).

“They have high expectations for themselves,” Hurd said of his senior class. “We had a great summer. We accomplished a lot of things individually and as a team, and they want to go as far as they can.”

Lindsey Lettner was the only Red Hawk to average at least 10 points per game last season (18.1), and the senior guard returns for her final season at G-E-T. Hurd said she will again be the focal point for the Red Hawk offense.

“She has put in a ridiculous amount of time honing her craft and has really built up her body. She has really gotten a lot stronger,” he said. “She’s been able to handle a lot of pressure from people and is a gym rat, she gets her shots up, you know, just that leader by example.”

Genna O’Neill will likely be the Red Hawks’ other leader this winter, and Hurd said the senior guard looks prepared now that the season is underway.

“Genna just brings a maturity. She’s very analytical, she’s very open with her communication with me. She is the person I can rely on to communicate with the rest of the team. She brings a wealth of experience and wants everybody on the same page,” Hurd said.

West Salem is the favorite to win the Coulee Conference this season, but Hurd said he expects his team to compete for a strong conference record and thinks his team could surprise some opponents this season.

“Our girls have that as a goal. That’s something that they want to accomplish, they think they can get there, and they have the tools to do it in my estimation,” Hurd said.

Nobody on the roster is taller than five-foot-eight for the Red Hawks, so the team plans to rely on possession and speed to counter their lack of size, Hurd said. Much of their offense will likely rely on motion and rotations in the offensive zone as opposed to ball screens.

“What we lack in height I think we make up for in some team athleticism and the ability to get teams to play a little faster,” Hurd said. “It’s something that we’ve really kind of seen as a strength of ours over the summer here in our ability to play more of a full court game.” 

He said his team will continue to hone in on certain skill areas as the season progresses, but after a season in which the Red Hawks played just nine games last year, he knows his team is ready to get back on the court.

With that happening last week, now the focus turns to continuing to improve. Having a strong senior class should help them do that, Hurd said.

“I just think it’s going to be week by week, it’s going to be opponent by opponent. I like the core group that we have, I like the core philosophies that we have in terms of offenses and defenses, X’s and O’s. But we’re going to tweak as we need to, and this is a very smart varsity class, a very dedicated group of kids that has been able to do a lot of things on the fly.”