Harding County enters the girls state tournament with a 22-0 record. We spoke to Coach Jay Wammen about the upcoming tournament.
Last year you guys had 14 wins, this year now you’re at 22, what worked well over this off season and what were you telling your girls?
You know, this is my first year coaching so we didn’t have our entire team in the off season. So pretty much from our day one practice they were learning a new philosophy, so we just had to take it one day at a time and get better every single day.
We had a lot of girls; we have 21 girls that compete every day and make each other better. So we have a lot of girls that are really good in the same gym together and we got better in a hurry.
With it being your first year what can you say it’s been like growing up and developing with these girls?
We were all doing it together, so it’s been an amazing experience for me and I’m very proud of the team and where we started to where we’re at right now. Just overall development and Improvement I’ve seen from them since the first day is pretty special.
You have two seniors (Claire Verhulst & Jaelyn Wendt), obviously very talented players, what can you say about them and their seasons?
Yeah you know and they’re both very unselfish players. We play 10 girls and that’s not always easy for seniors, but they are both the focal point of our team. They do it the right way, they’re probably the two best players on the court right now. They both are just incredible not only basketball players but people in general.
You talked about going undefeated, was there any discussion about going one game at a time or what was the process going throughout the season?
We kind of realized we had something special when we went into Bowman, North Dakota and at the time they were the number one team in the state and we got down early we got down 17 points in the second quarter. But we just kept fighting back and crawling back and we were able to tie the game up late in the 4th quarter and get a huge 4-point win.
That kind of gave that team confidence that, hey, maybe we are the real deal and we can play with anyone.
It’s no secret that you’re more of an isolated school in South Dakota. What can you say about the community around the girls and do you guys have that little bit of chip on your shoulder being from the northwest corner?
Yeah I don’t think we need any extra added stuff like that but somehow it kind of finds us. I told the girls I am completely fine this year just flying under the radar but once we get to the state tournament hopefully we can go make some noise and hopefully Harding County will be there to stay in girls basketball.
Yeah your defense has just been incredible you know multiple times this year you’ve held teams to 20 points or under 30 points what can you just talk to me more about that.
That was our goal and our first day of practice we said whatever we get out of this season is going to be because we were great on defense every single day, at every practice, and that will translate to every game.
So every drill that we do we really focus on the defensive end because if you can’t play defense and give that effort then you can’t step on the court for us and they bought in and so it’s been fun watching.
You know when that final horn went off in the SoDak16 talk to me about your emotions just going through you then.
I had goosebumps. I kind of had chills even at the start of the game, just to see the crowd and the atmosphere, it’s just a big deal for our entire community.
State Tournament out in Rapid City, you know you’re going to face another West River team in Lyman, what are your thoughts going into that matchup?
Yeah that was our goal to get to the state tournament. It’s going to be a fun tournament atmosphere. Lyman is a really good basketball team and anytime you get to a state tournament you’re going to see some really good teams. So they’re not the regular seven seed that you’re going to see.
The field from one to eight is wide open. They’re all eight teams who are good, who could all end up winning it or they could end up in eighth place, so you have to play your best basketball.
This article is our part of our coaches’ interview series presented by The Move Group. To see the complete list, check out our website below.
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