GILFORD – Over Thanksgiving break, Gilford girls’ basketball Coach Rick Forge brought in recently graduated players Cassidy Bartlett and Maddie Harris to practice with the team.
Bartlett and Harris were two of the biggest pieces to the Golden Eagles’ best season in school history a year ago – a season that saw them run the table en route to a perfect 22-0 campaign capped off with a thrilling Division III championship game victory over rival Laconia. But when they came back to practice last week, the former All-State players weren’t there to gloat about past success. They were there to teach the younger girls about the game at the varsity level, while unintentionally showing Forge how different this season will be.
“I just inserted them into the drills and then you really saw just how quick last year’s team was,” Forge said. “When you put Harris on the court with Cassidy Bartlett, it’s like, ‘Oh my God, we were that fast last year?’ ”
That team seems like a distant memory now as Forge worked through drills with his new-look team Wednesday afternoon. The continuity and team chemistry built over the last four seasons is all but gone. Same goes for the starting five, which has just one holdover from the championship team. And all that offense from the Golden Eagles, who averaged over 66 points per game? That’s gone, too, as graduation and injuries depleted 55 points from that average.
“It isn’t like you’re reloading. That isn’t it,” said Forge, who opens his 13th season as coach tonight at White Mountains at 6:30. “This is a rebuild because this is a completely different identity in terms of this team as opposed to last year’s team and the year before that and the year before that. … Our starting five should be competitive. We’re going to be competitive and we’re are going to have to take it the way it is. We had the luxury of that other group for four years.”
The lone holdover as a starter from last year’s team is 5-foot-10 post player Stevie Orton, who will carry much more of the offensive burden on her shoulders with the completely re-tooled roster.
Accustomed to the same group of faces every year, Orton said this preseason has been a little strange.
“It’s just weird not being able to come right back to basketball and have people know what they’re doing,” Orton said. “We have to re-learn drills, we have to re-learn our offense, our defense, our press, literally everything … the chemistry is going to take a bit.”
She will be joined up front by senior Kaitlyn VanBennekum in the starting lineup, but where the offense will be generated from remains the biggest question mark leading up to the season opener. It certainly doesn’t help the Golden Eagles that scoring-minded guard Brooke Beaudet, who the team was expecting to slide into a more high-usage, ball-handling role this season, will be unavailable this year after offseason surgery.
With her soft touch and smooth shooting stroke, Beaudet gave Gilford the type of outside scoring threat that few teams in Division III have, and she will be almost impossible to replace.
“We’re not going to take any chances with her,” Forge said. “It is what it is with it and you move ahead and you put the load on Stevie.”
“Defense is going to be the key this year because we don’t have that outside threat,” Orton said. “We don’t really have a mid-range threat either, so all of our points are going to come from inside basically, or on fast breaks.”
The loss of both guards opens up room for juniors Taryn Breton, Lauren Dean and Olivia Harris, who all figure to crack the starting five to begin the season.
Breton will make the move up from junior varsity to run the point and will share responsibilities of taking the ball up the floor with Orton. Dean and Harris should provide the Golden Eagles with some stability at the guard and forward spots as Forge tries to mix and match the best lineup.
“Taryn did a fine job last year, she just doesn’t have the varsity experience,” Forge said. “It’s like any normal program: you get somebody who graduates and now your junior comes in and is ready to take the point.”
The second unit figures to be the weak point for Gilford, at least to start as the younger players develop and adjust to the speed of the game at the varsity level. While Forge will have juniors Sarah Fillion, Emily Smith and Olivia Trindade off the bench as upperclassmen, all three are new to the team this year. Sophomores Lexi Boisvert, Laurel Normandin, Hannah Perkins and Karly Sanborn will attempt to cement their roles, while a large freshmen group with potential will get some seasoning on the JV team.
“We can’t go into games with the mentality that we’re going to outscore teams,” Forge said. “We have to play both ends of the court this year and really buckle down on the defensive end and keep other teams under 50 points, under 45 points and then find a way to score 45 points.
“They’ve got their own identity and I told them that it’s going to take three or four games to figure it out just who you are, what you are and where your strengths and weaknesses are and we can go from that.”
(Jay McAree can be reached at 369-3340, jmcaree@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @JayMcAree.)