The Haines Lady Glacier Bears have their sights set on a trip to Anchorage this basketball season.
The girls were one game short of the state tournament earlier in March, when their season ended with a one-point loss to eventual 3A champion Mount Edgecumbe.
Haines coach Brian Elliott and his team headed to Petersburg this week for a tournament that runs through Saturday.
“This is a good opportunity for us,” Elliott said. “We’ve only had two weeks of practice, so we’ve been drilling fundamentals. We’ve been working on some of our offensive rotations, but, mostly, the first month of the season I like to stick to fundamentals, because you can’t put the carriage in front of the horse.”
The Glacier Bears were slated to be part of a field that includes Petersburg, Thunder Mountain and Wrangell.
“It’s nice to be able to play some conference opponents without it really counting towards our conference record,” Elliott said.
The team will return to Petersburg for games Jan. 7-8. The team’s home opener is Jan. 21-22 against Wrangell.
Elliott, in his fourth season, is looking for his first state tournament berth in Haines.
“I’ve seen a lot of improvement, especially out of the junior class, from their sophomore year to their junior year,” he said. “Sometimes, I just think it’s having them in your program for a couple of years. Once they get a little older and mature, things just start to click a little better.”
The Glacier Bears must overcome the loss of Fran Daly and Carlee Heinmiller to graduation. Abby Jones and Jolene Lemieux will provide senior leadership.
“It’s really neat that Abby and Jolene, I had them as freshmen, and they’re my first players I’ve had all four years, so it’s kind of special,” Elliott said.
Jones, an all-conference honoree, has battled an illness early this season that will prevent her from playing in Petersburg. But she said she’s excited for upcoming conference games, and the team has entered December in better shape overall.
“The girls have been pushing themselves harder than they usually have,” Jones said.
Lemieux also said the Glacier Bears seem stronger this season. Lemieux wants to wrap up her basketball career with a state tournament appearance and said she will miss her teammates. “I’m pretty sad that this is my last year.”
The seniors both are returning starters, along with junior Hannah Wing. Elliott said Wing might be out for about a month, due to an injured ankle.
Thanks to “a really big junior and sophomore class,” Elliott has 19 players on his roster.
“We are such a big team, we’ve started running split practices,” he said. “We have the junior varsity come in and have a half hour just to themselves, and then they cross over with varsity for a half hour, and then we have an hour and a half of just varsity-only practice.”
Elliott runs practices with Stuart DeWitt and noted, “It’s really like we’re co-coaches.”
The team also benefited from the expertise of Greg Brittenham, a New York Knicks trainer who was in Haines this summer. Brittenham offered some of his NBA-level advice to the girls during open gyms.
“The girls who did show up over the summer, they came back this fall a whole big step ahead of where they would have normally been,” Elliott said.
The Glacier Bears next will host an alumni game 7 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 22, at Haines High School’s Karl Ward Gymnasium.