By Kary Booher
At some small schools, the graduation of a basketball standout – particularly one who scored more than 1,500 career points – would be a devastating loss.
However, that doesn’t appear to be the case for the Fordland High School girls basketball program. In fact, longtime coach Kevin McDaris isn’t afraid to say that this year’s group could be one of his most competitive in his 16 years there.
“I think they have the potential to be one of the top two or three teams we’ve had at Fordland,” said McDaris, who is 222-176 at the Webster County school. “We’ve got two years to work together, and you don’t get that a lot of times.”
Fordland finished 21-7 last year, reaching the district semifinals before falling to Norwood. That was the final high school game for Ali Sparks, a four-year starter who was All-Summit Conference and all-district all four years.
Fortunately for the Lady Eagles, a seven-person rotation should allow Fordland to challenge in the Summit and district, which is no easy task given 20-win teams in Hartville, Gainesville and Norwood.
The rotation features returning starters Sophie Sparks and Emily White as well as freshman Abi Southard. Sparks averaged 11.3 points a game last season, while White averaged 9.6 points.
“Those three have played a lot,” McDaris said. “They played in the summer, and they’ve been together awhile. Between the three of them, they can pick up the slack with the points Ali scored last year.”
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A third returning starter is Danielle Bailey.
“She’s kind of the person who makes us tough,” McDaris said. “She always seems to be in the right place at the right time. … I have to tell her to shoot. But she plays good defense. She’s also not very big but usually has to guard a forward or center. But she’s strong and athletic, and very intelligent on the floor.”
The Lady Eagles will determine a fifth starter in the early going. Lexi Stoll and Brooke Hyder should contend for the spot, but Stoll may have the inside track following the graduation of Amanda Mitchell.
“She’s not real big,” McDaris said of Stoll, “but she as close to a post player as we have.”
Other names to keep tabs on are Megan Garner and Cheyenne McMillan. The team also includes junior Jaiden Suter and freshmen Kenzie Branson, Jessie Brown, Katie Matney and Kayleena Lucas.
For McDaris, he won’t have to spend time trying to find the team’s competitive nature. For one, several basketball players have been on Fordland’s volleyball team this fall. Plus, the frosh were on junior high school teams that either won a conference title or finished second in conference.
The experience could benefit in other ways, particularly with the way McDaris sets his offense, which tries to avoid playing half-court sets because of a mostly guard lineup.
“We like to use our quickness and speed,” McDaris said. “We try to play uptempo as much as we can. We’ll press from time to time, but we do it in spots with our short bench.”
