The Lady Glacier Bears closed their regular season last weekend at home against Craig, losing Friday, 57-19, and Saturday, 49-22.
The losses bring the team’s regular season record to 2-16, but as the squad prepares for the Southeast Regional Basketball Tournament in Juneau starting Tuesday, at least one Lady Bear is not dispirited.
“I’m really excited for regionals and ready to kick butt,” said senior point guard Jordan Stigen.
Coach Greg Brittenham will tell you that competitive athletics at the amateur level is about more than winning. During three years with the team, Brittenham has emphasized the importance of the sport as a vehicle to help mold players into responsible young women with self-confidence who trust in each other.
Still, he desperately wants to win.
“If you asked me right now, do I think we can go out and win a state championship, heck yeah, I do,” said Brittenham. “And if I didn’t, I shouldn’t be out here coaching.”
The girls seemed to gain momentum with their first season win against Wrangell in January, but a long, tough road trip to southern Southeast stifled their budding confidence.
For Brittenham, the challenge isn’t that the girls can’t play with intensity, but the difficulty they have in maintaining it. He constantly tells players he’s not asking them to do anything they haven’t done before.
Brittenham coaches with a soft touch. All the shouting at last weekend’s games came from the Craig coach, despite wide leads that his squad enjoyed through the weekend.
The Craig coach berated his six players, but they continued to play composed, disciplined and intense basketball. Their onslaught persisted.
Meanwhile, late in the second game on the Haines bench, Brittenham seemed to be handling his players with kid gloves, nearly pleading with them during one time-out.
“Let’s go ladies,” he said. “We need to increase the pressure and play at an intensity that I know you’re capable of. Have confidence and take a chance.”
To a team trailing by 20, Brittenham’s approach was appropriate, but one also wonders: Are these players aware that it’s okay, and sometimes even necessary, to play with an edge once the referee’s whistle blows and the score is officially kept?
Brittenham fervently believes in this team’s potential to reach state.
To do so, they must sustain great intensity, execute in games the skills they have worked on all season in practice, and compete with a fierceness that outstrips their opponents’.
The question for the girls is: Do they believe, and are they willing to push themselves to that level?
Haines opens next week’s regional tournament as the fifth seed, with their first-round opponent yet to be determined. Early indications are that it may be this very same Craig team.