Excitement is in the air for the upcoming Laurel-Concord-Coleridge girls basketball season.
There’ll be 16 girls out for LCC basketball with just over half being underclassmen.
Marcus Messersmith will be starting year number 10 overall coaching which includes six at LCC.
Coach Messersmith will be in his fifth year as the head coach for the Bears.
“The girls have been working really hard so far this year in practice and I think that comes from the top,” said Messersmith. “We’re kind of just trying to continue off the success they had in the volleyball season and so far, it’s going pretty well.”
Coach Messersmith will be joined by Izac Reifenrath.
Seniors are Tali Erwin, Lainey Schutte and Taliya Sims.
Returning starters will be Schutte, sophomore Rena Rasmussen, sophomore Kaida Eriksen and Erwin while sophomore Carlie Kvols came off the bench last year. Juniors Camryn Sohler and Brynlee Stanley were also highlighted by coach Messersmith.
Erwin was injured late in the volleyball season during the district final and will be out until Christmas time.
Coach Messersmith added a lot of the underclassmen played in multiple varsity games last year.
“Obviously we’re adding four-five more freshmen this year just to round out our numbers,” Messersmith added. “The majority of our team is sophomores and freshmen for the most part. That gives us a lot of learning to do but also gives us a lot of hope for the future and what we can do.”
LCC will look to continue off their success from the fall volleyball season making it to a district final.
Laurel-Concord-Coleridge competed in a pre-season Jamboree on Tuesday, Nov. 26 hosting Guardian Angels Central Catholic.
Coach Messersmith mentioned the team was able to learn more what they needed to work on.
“We scored 61 points (but) we have a lot of things to work on as far as cleaning things up defensively and transition defense,” Messersmith mentioned. “The things we saw there’s a lot of good, obviously the great thing about those games is it gives us information of what we really need to work on going forward before we have a real game starting on Thursday.”
Last year, LCC finished 15-9. The Bears were led by Rasmussen with 16.7 points and 8.4 rebounds per game. Eriksen will return as the third leading scorer from last year with 8.3 ppg, Erwin averaged 8.0 ppg and Schutte led the team in assists (2.6 pg) and steals (2.3 pg) last season.
The Laurel-Concord-Coleridge girls basketball team will open their season at Creighton on Thursday, Dec. 5. JV action will start at 4 p.m. with boys varsity also in play.
LCC will be competing in the first-ever Greater Northeast Activities Conference (GNAC).
“Not so much because we’re C1 I guess a lot of our changes are due to our conference change,” said Messersmith. “We have some new opponents that we’ll play this year that we haven’t played in the past. We haven’t had the opportunity to add everybody to our schedule yet but we have most of the teams from our conference. Then next year actually we’ll have everybody from our conference (GNAC) and our schedule will change even more.”
The Bears will also be visiting Crofton on Friday, Dec. 6 with JV action beginning at 4:30 p.m.
Home opening competition for Laurel-Concord-Coleridge will be on Friday, Dec. 13 hosting Tri County Northeast with JV action to open the day at 4:30 p.m.
