HOWARD – East Knox girls basketball coach Chip Pozderac has made one observation about her team so far this fall.
“I can tell you that I’m the tallest one in the gym,” she said. “I’m not 5-foot-9, though I tell my doctor I am.”
The undersized Bulldogs have to replace much of their size from last season in Meggan Bartok, Abigail Buckingham and Morgan McCauley.
“We’re not that tall this year,” senior guard Joci Totten said. “But we’ve got the speed and that’s what we’ve been working on. We’re trying to get conditioned and push the ball up and use what we’ve got.”
That speed will allow Pozderac to do something she’s always wanted to do on the defensive end.
“We’re finally getting to run that man-to-man that I’ve wanted to run all these years,” she said. “We’ve never been quite fast enough to. Now, we’ve gotta be fast because we’re not tall.”
Bartok averaged 16.4 points, 9.0 rebounds, 3.9 assists and 2.1 steals per game— all team-bests for the Bulldogs, who finished 11-12 overall and 4-10 in the Knox Morrow Athletic Conference.
She left as the fourth player to eclipse 1,000 points in program history after Claire Williams, Rosy Burwell Davis and Liz Beach.
“We lost three of our starters last year … and they were three of our best scorers too,” Totten said. “They were three of our tallest people as well. But I think we’re doing really good. I’m really proud. We work really well together; we get along really well. I love my team.”
East Knox made it out of the sectional round for the first time since 1997 before falling to Lancaster Fairfield Christian 49-37 in a district semifinal game.
Buckingham and McCauley were the tallest players on the team at 5-foot-10, but their presence was just as prolific behind the arc as it was in the paint.
Totten returns along with fellow senior Madi Annett (forward), juniors Alexandria Magers (guard) and Laura Keith (forward) and sophomore Shanda Melick (forward). Magers is the top returning scorer at 6.7 points per game last season, and Keith has the distinction of the being the tallest player at 5-8.
“These are some of the most coachable young ladies in my 20-plus years of coaching that I’ve ever had,” Pozderac said. “That starts with our seniors — Totten and Madi Annett. (They are) just phenomenal. You throw in an Alexandria Magers and a Laura Keith and a Shanda Melick and it’s a really nice group of young ladies.”
Junior Anjel Montgomery (forward); sophomores Alivia Elliott (guard), Hannah McCoy (guard), Kaya Salyers (forward), Natalie Smith (guard) and Ava Stiltner (forward); and freshman Jayden Annett (forward) are new to the varsity level.
Sophomore Raelynn Todd would have seen time but is out for the season with a torn ACL.
“We’ve always been scrappy, but now we have to be smart and scrappy this year,” Pozderac said. “We have to run; we have to be in shape (because) we’re going to be smaller than pretty much every team that we face.”
