Sandhills-Thedford Girls Basketball
Knights make big jump in first season under Deines
Last year was definitely tough for the Sandhills-Thedford girls basketball team, as they were competitive in a majority of their games but only found a way to win one game on the season. This year with experience brought back the Knights improved tremendously and went 7-11.
“I thought the program made a lot of strides from last year,” S-T Coach
Josh Deines said. “We improved in a lot of categories from last year, and bringing everyone back from last year really helped with that. We made a lot of changes from last year to this year with both offense and defense and I thought the girls handled that really well especially since they didn’t have a summer to really do anything because of COVID.”
The Knights biggest win on the season came against Arthur County in the first round of the MNAC Conference Tournament. Despite being underdogs against an eventual 13-7 Wolves squad, S-T battled for an 11 point victory.
This helped propel them to the final day of the MNAC Conference Tournament where they ended up finishing fourthplace.
One of the biggest additions to the Knights roster this year was Dayle Haake. The freshman gave S-T a post presence they lacked a season ago and helped them be much more competitive in games.
From this squad, the Knights lose Emily Martindale, Madison Marten, and Ariel Bryant to graduation. Their leadership on and off the court will be missed by the program.
Coach Deines stated the most memorable thing about this team was their ability to adapt to change in his first year. He didn’t necessarily have the time to prepare with them in the summer, so the girls had to learn a lot of new things on the fly.
“I’ll look back at this year and really appreciate the work ethic that this group of girls had,” Deines said. “This was my first year being the head coach for them and we didn’t get a summer to install what I wanted to do because of COVID. The month of December was really tough with trying to make sure the girls were ready to play but trying to install a lot of different things both on offense and defense. I thought girls handled everything really well and I’m happy with the effort they gave each and every day.”