The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Comets adjust to new roles, find success
The Amherst Comets, having lost Sydney Roule to graduation, struggled at the beginning of the season. But now new leaders are guiding the team to success. Plus, the Top of the Crop.
Growing pains are inevitable for any team going through a changing of the guard.
For Amherst, a change in identity this offseason has forced the young Comets to grow up faster than imagined on a team that returned only two seniors.
Forced to replace 2017 Lorain County Co-Miss Basketball Sydney Roule, coach Kevin Collins has had to wait for the right time for his new leader to emerge as the Comets dive into the heart of their Southwestern Conference schedule.
Collins finally learned who his leader would be over the holidays. Senior Kate Iliff, a four-year varsity player, took matters into her own hands against a gritty Avon Lake team and proved what all of her experience has brought her.
“It’s really great having a player like we’ve had in Sydney Roule over the last few years. When you have a Miss Basketball on your team, that leadership handles itself, but I think it’s kind of a new role for them,” Collins said. “Both Kamryn (Dziak) and Kate are great kids with tremendous work ethic, but they’ve never really had to be the vocal leader before and I think that’s something they’ve had to do more this year.
“I think Kate’s done a really good job of stepping up. The other night, we had a really tough game with Avon Lake and shots weren’t going early and in the second quarter, it was one of those moments where Kate decided she was going to take the game over and she got the ball inside and scored and as a coach, that was probably the biggest relief, in that we had that player who finally stepped up and said I’m going to put the team on my back.”
Waiting for the right time, Iliff said with such a young and talented group, the team has each other to rely on when the game is on the line.
“Well we do have a lot of younger players, like Kamryn has been playing for a while with us and Amaya (Staton). She’s young, but she helps us out a lot and it’s nice to have a post that works in really well down low and where she trusts us and we trust her and kicks the ball out to us when she doesn’t have a shot,” Iliff said. “Kamryn is really stepping up. She’s probably the best scorer on the team and other players too, but we’re just really balanced and the trust is there because we work really well together.”
Working their hardest to bring their best brand of basketball when the games matter more in January and February, Collins said the trust level for his team has been the biggest key as players become more comfortable in their roles.
“No. 1, we’re a pretty young team. We start a couple sophomores. We only have two seniors on our squad, so we’re still pretty young and inexperienced and we’re coming from a pretty veteran team, which had some established roles,” Collins said. “We’ve had some girls who were role players last year that had to step into some bigger roles. I think it’s just been a bit of an adjustment period for them and trying to figure out not only their role and how to help the team, but how to play together as well.”
“I would say really in the last couple of weeks, our girls have really started to hit a groove with being comfortable with each other on the floor and knowing where each other are. So that’s a big part of it.”
Because of that trust in one another and growth as a team, Amherst is currently riding a season best four-game winning streak, thanks to doing the little things they’ve been practicing all year.
“We just took the time to recollect everything and work on ourselves a little bit,” Iliff said. “After our tournament, we just worked on the little things in practice and I think that’s really starting to show in games now that we’re winning.”
Keying in on controlling the glass, Iliff said that has been the underlying factor into the team’s success on both offense and defense as they make their final playoff push.
“We worked on a lot of rebounding in practice and just our overall intensity on defense and that leads into our transition offense where we start scoring a lot more,” Iliff said. “Basically, we just focused on defen- sive rebounding as well as offensive rebounding, too.”