Young Blazers look to continue upward.
The Daniel Boone High School girls basketball team is coming off a season in which they went 7-3 in the Berks League and advanced to the league semifinals before losing to Governor Mifflin. Considering the Lady Blazers were 1-9 in the league the season before, and 3-7 the season before that, it was a pretty good showing. Now Daniel Boone would like to continue that upward trend this winters.
It won’t be an easy task. Among the graduating seniors from last year’s team were Steph Sievers and Shelby Vanderslice, the team’s top two scorers. This will be a relatively young team, with seven sophomores and freshman, two seniors and two juniors.
“We are a very young team and need to keep the girls focused on improving,” said Daniel Boone head girls basketball coach Ray Cinquanto. “The experience we will get this year is for building on the future.”
The Lady Blazers do get forward Alayna Roesener back this season. She was third on the teamin scoring last year with 161 points, an average of six points a game. She will be counted on to do some more scoring this year tomake up for the loss of Sievers and Vanderslice, but Coach Cinquanto thinks her leadership ability is her biggest asset.
“She’s a born leader and very athletic,” said Cinquanto. “She will be the backbone of our team and will relay on her leadership to carry the team as far as we can go.”
The team should be tough defensively, it’s full of aggressive underclassmen who can keep the other team’s scoring totals down. The challenge will be to find someone who can score points on the offensive side of the court. Roesener will need some help in that regard. Cinquanto is hoping one of the younger players will step up and score some points. But at this points, the goal is to keep improving from the beginning of the season to the end. Nobody is expecting a division championship for the Blazers this year, but if the younger players can develop quickly, they can certainly be competitive.
“Our goal is to Improve every time we step onto the court,” said Cinquanto. “We are a young team and need to develop the influx of young players.”
The season gets underway for Daniel Boone on Dec. 4 at Oley Valley. The Blazers will open their home schedule on Dec. 8 against Brandywine Heights.