FREDERICKTOWN – Fredericktown girls basketball coach Tim Maceyko is hoping his team has one advantage over the rest of the Knox Morrow Athletic Conference this season: size.
The Freddies feature five players 5-foot-10 or taller this season, making the post an area of strength as the league has gotten shorter.
Post presences like Casey Bertke and Hannah Wickline at Cardington-Lincoln; Gena West of Highland; Megan Bartok, Abigail Buckingham and Morgan McCauley at East Knox; and CeCe Newbold, Ally Bower and Hannah Duncan of Danville have all graduated.
“A lot of the size is out of the league now,” said Maceyko, who enters his third season as coach of the Freddies. “I’m pretty excited about what we have. We’ll be using the triple-post offense this year. (I have) five true post players that I can move in and out.”
Maceyko is hoping that posts Jill Bouton (6-0, freshman), Audrey Bouton (5-11, junior) and Zoe Newell (5-10, senior) will be able to take advantage.
Gabby Daniels (5-9, junior) also returns to the post as the team’s leading scorer and rebounder last season. She averaged 9.6 points and 6.8 rebounds for the Freddies, who finished 9-14 overall (3-11 in the KMAC) and lost to Richwood North Union 64-48 in the first round of the Division III district tournament to wrap up the season.
“We picked up right where we left off in terms of energy level and I think the confidence is growing,” Maceyko said. “When I first got here, there wasn’t an expectation of winning, and now there is. I think they know that this is a year that we can be competitive in pretty much all of our games. If we don’t have a lot of turnovers and we D up a little tighter, then we’re gonna be in all of our games this year.”
Senior Jacklyn Nussbaum (5-10) is moving back inside after spending much of last season handling the ball. Nussbaum averaged 8.7 points and 6.4 rebounds, good for second on the team in both categories. She led the team with 2.7 assists per game. It’s a move that she welcomes.
“Ever since I started playing basketball, I’ve played both (inside and outside),” Nussbaum said. “Every coach I’ve had has always put me inside and out, so I’m kind of used to that. It wasn’t that big of a transition this year.
“I like playing inside, actually. I feel like we have better guards and better opportunities to make more plays out there.”
The move was made possible because of the ball-handling development of Taylor Overholt (5-7, senior), Celeste Swihart (5-6, junior), Annie Maglott (5-5, junior) and Grace Sipes (5-5, sophomore).
Summer Weller (5-10, senior), though tall, will play outside because of her ability to shoot the three-ball.
“She hit 38 threes last year,” Maceyko said. “She’s an outside threat once she gets going. So we have an inside-outside game— I’m pretty excited.”
