OK, this week’s ED had five winter previews (boys’ bball and boys’ swimming didn’t start practice until Monday) so I figured I would expand a little some more.
Let’s start with Girls’ Hockey. I have seen almost all of their two home games this season, and it is already obvious that they are better than last season. The biggest thing is they are getting more offensive rushes. As soon as they team gets the hang of finishing those rushes, they will put up some more goals.
The offense will largely depend on Dayna Sherman after the team lost several scoring threats. Even though she was playing defense last week in the conference opener against Mound-Westonka, the lone Dragon goal was the result of her break-out ablilities.
As mentioned in the preview, eight of the 16 team members are a freshman or younger. The interesting part is almost all of them are seeing regular minutes. Coach Johnson talked about how he thought the attitude on the team was better than it has been in the past, and that influx of young talent is one of those reasons in my opinion. The speed of their development will affect the Dragons’ record this season, but this team is more about the future.
It will be interesting to see what happens with the Gymnastics team this season. They are coming off one of the best seasons in the programs’ history, but won’t be quite that good this season. The team lost Krystal Gatz and Jocelyn Salmen to graduation, and three other good talents for other reasons.
The team is not in a rebuilding mode, but they aren’t exactly replacing all of that talent either. There are plenty of good gymnasts left, like seniors Jocelyn Erickson and Leighana Nyquist just to name two, and they will in charge of carrying this team.
When I talked to coach Glur last week, there were still many spots open. But there were no concerns that they could not be filled adequately. All in all, the main goal this season is to try to keep the program at a competitive level. Hopefully they can back up to full strength soon to take advantage of the much weaker section they were put in.
The boys’ hockey team is looking for more wins this season. In 2006-07, they had solid, experienced defensemen and a good goaltender and still gave up four goals a game, the most of anybody in the conference. One of the reasons for that is they play a lot of good teams. With Lucas Johnson back in net however, I expect that GAA to go down.
Offensively, this team will be fine. Brett Danielson is an excellent hockey player, and so is John Barrick, Zac Johnson, and Jordan Lecher. Those guys will score plenty of goals to make up for the loss of Charlie Hamm. From talking to Coach Olson, I gather that this team will play much like last season. They will be gritty and win puck battles in the corners. Hopefully, that will result in more wins this season.
It is still early to tell what will happen with the wrestling team because they had just one day of practice under their belt when I talked to coach Clemen. The one thing that he said is that the team has no superstars, but a lot of above-average wrestlers. That sounds very similar to the baseball or football teams that had a high level of success recently. That means if they stay healthy, they could be fairly successful in dual this season.
The strength of the team will be in the upper weights. Not too many teams are going to head into a meet wanting to face the Larson twins and the Pokornowskis. The middle will be a question for the Chargers, but Clemen seemed confindent that he could fill that with little problem.
Girls’ basketball should be much improved this season. The teams only lost two seniors, and most of the girls on this team saw a lot of minutes last season. Between Aimee Peterson and Brea Revard, this team will be tough in the paint. Combine that will Julie Munson running the point, and this team should score some points. Others like Katelyn Nelson came on at the end of the season and should be good this season.
The prediction: they will win more than one game this season.
I am afraid that the girls hockey team is in for a long season.
Gymnastics might surprise some people and do better than expected.
Boys hockey is always reliant on how the puck moves. If you get enough lucky bounces then any team can win. I saw a goal a few days ago where it was shot from center ice and went right past a professional goalie!
Wrestling is looking good so far! Unexpected things have happened in the past from a bunch of “ordinary guys”. I believe there was a state championship won by just such a group of individuals.
The girls B ball team already matched their one win from last year!
Last night the lady Chargers won against Kimball in an ugly match.
The new way they are inforcing the foul rules is not going to be pretty this year for either boys or girls. Depends on the officials judgement I guess. There is no other way to explain how on one play if a player makes contact it is a foul and on the next play the other team can make a worse contact and it is not called a foul.