By Adam Knoll
Sports correspondent
Recently, the Whitewater High School girls’ basketball team slipped from No. 4 in the Wissport.net coaches’ poll to out of the top 10 following their second loss of the season.
This is a season in which the Lady Whippets are supposed to fire on all cylinders and breeze past those whom they are supposed to beat. This is a team looking to raise some noise on the state level. At 1-2 going into last week’s games, the only real noise being made was one of a team that might have overestimated itself.
However, there have been signs of improvement in the last few games. After dropping a winnable game against McFarland, coach Judy Harms and her players have been playing angry and it’s shown in the way they have been beating teams. Not content with besting Jefferson by 13, the Whippets went on to destroy Lake Mills by 40, giving up just 30 points. Not content with that output, Whitewater only allowed Edgerton 21 points total in last Thursday’s away match.
The Lady Whippets have firepower across the board, starting with bulk scorer Brooke Trewyn, Whitewater has two other great shooters in Sarah Schumacher and Kailey Reynolds, not to mention freshman Myriama Smith-Traore who can put up big numbers as well.
No, any conversation that starts with how good the Lady Whippets can be must begin with the defense, an area the team is clearly focusing on. In the team’s first four games, they allowed three players to score more than 24 points. In their 58-21 win over Edgerton, Whitewater did not let one player score more than seven points and the highest scoring quarter for Edgerton as a team came in the fourth with seven points, once the game was well out of their reach.
Trewyn didn’t even need to fill it up in this game, scoring nine in the dominant effort. Reynolds, Schumacher and Dani Dolan all shared the top with 11 points each. The Whippets led 20-5 going into the second quarter and 31-9 into halftime. After that the team put it on cruise control, still dominating the second half by a 27-12 margin.
The new effort on defense is opening things up on the other end making offense is easier to come by. Quick scores lead to big runs, and before you know it these games can be over quite quickly. It should be no surprise that the Whippets three biggest scoring outputs of the season have been in their last three games.
Overall, Whitewater is 4-2, standing at 3-1 in conference, and now finds itself only one game down in the Rock Valley North standings.
Every team goes through a rough patch during the season. If Whitewater has already navigated theirs then they truly may be able to meet the lofty goals they set for themselves in the preseason.
Stats from the Dec. 16 game against Lake Mills include: Brooke Trewyn led the Whippets with 22 points, Rebekah Schumacher added 10 while Myriama Smith-Traore and Sarah Schumacher scored 17 points between them. The Lady Whippets led 23-9 after the first period and 39-16 at half en route to a 70-30 victory.
Whitewater will be back in action Friday, Dec. 28 against Stoughton.
