by Annie Cox ’24
After spending last season working on foundational elements such as team chemistry, the USN girls’ basketball team is now working on honing their competitive potential. The team’s record, 4-10, does not completely reflect their growth as a team over the past two years. The team has had multiple very close losses, falling to St. Cecilia on December 22 by two points, to Antioch by two on November 29, and to Hume Fogg in overtime on November 17.
Girls’ basketball coach Karsten Olson says these small wins are on track with the team’s goals for this season.
“The short term goal every day is, ‘Are we going to get better today?’ In terms of numbers and winning X amount of games or X amount of achievements. …that stuff will come. I think we’re way more focused on the intangibles,” Olson said.
Junior Uma Peters describes the “intangibles” as being both team chemistry and in-game play.
“I think we’re learning how to play with each other really well. We’re starting to really find our team identity and what we do well and things we need to work on,” Peters said. “[One goal for this year] is learning to do stuff on the fly. I think something that we’ve come across a lot this year is close games… so kind of learning how to deal with that pressure in those games.”
To achieve these goals, Olson is looking at small steps. He is thinking about how to improve and keep the improvements across multiple seasons- building the girls’ team to last for future years.
“What I’ve observed is that small and consistent, incremental improvements are often more effective in the long term than big sweeping overhauls or boot camps. So the big thing was identifying what we were going to do to improve as a team,” Olsen said.
Building upon what lessons learned season after season is what will make the team great, Olson says.
“We had a successful season last year, because we focused on our own positive spirit, our own competitive energy, regardless of traditional outcome,” he said. “This year, we’re maintaining our unconventional measurements of competitive spirit and of being locked in and playing for each other but, in addition, we’re trying to win conventional outcomes.”
