Girls basketball has unfinished business

Last season, the Hill City girls basketball team made it to the state tournament.

But, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the tournament was canceled.

“We have a little unfinished business,” said head coach Wade Ginsbach.

But Ginsbach said they won’t rest on what happened last year with that team. This is a different team, he said, and this is this year’s team.

Ginsbach is challenging his team on how they are going to leave their mark this year, knowing they can’t rely on “whatever it was last year.”

“We just have to be our own team this year,” Ginsbach said.

His team, though, knows how to forge their own identity.

The team returns all but one player who graduated last year. So Ginsbach will have a lot of veterans to work with.

“We have three girls who have been starting for four years,” Ginsbach said. “We have another one who has been starting for three years. And there’s a lot of key players who played a lot last year. We have a lot of girls who can fill in.”

One goal he has for his team this year is to figure out how to do things consistently.

That, Ginsbach said, is their key.

Hard work has always been a staple and a cornerstone of theirs, he said, but now they have to figure out how to do it more consistently so they can compete.

And his team plays a pretty competitive schedule, Ginsbach said, so being consistent is going to be the key.

Every game is fun, he said, and his team learned last year they can’t take each game for granted.

“You have to take each game for what it is,” he said. “You can’t be looking forward to the next game because you might not have a next game. Or we might not have a game for a couple of weeks. You just don’t know. I think this year, as coaches, you have to take every game, every win for what they are and get better.”

Ginsbach said he and his team will focus on controlling what they can control.

If things get switched up, they just roll with it, Ginsbach said.

“Really, that’s just it. You can’t control anything,” Ginsbach said. “You can’t control other teams. And if some people are sitting out for us, it’s just next man up and control what you can control.”