By RICHIE HALL
School is out for the summer, but everyone in Indiana knows basketball is a year-round sport.
Many high schools across the state are getting their teams together to play summer tournaments, an informal way to bring in new players and gauge where a team stands at this point in time. Westfield’s girls team hosted a Saturday tournament, the Westfield Summer Shootout, allowing a handful of teams from across the state to see some competition.
“It’s always nice to be able to have a bunch of high school teams come in,” said Shamrocks coach Ginny Smith. “Everybody gets to play each other. You get to see a lot of good basketball. So all in all, I think it’s a good day.”
In addition to Westfield, Hamilton Heights and reigning Class 4A state champion Hamilton Southeastern were also in attendance. Each team played three games, with the Shamrocks taking on Warsaw, Fort Wayne Snider and Norwell.
“It gives us all an opportunity just to see where our kids are at,” said Smith. “We just want a benchmark to know the things we need to be working on. Summer’s so good just for development and being able to just spend some time on the little things, and then get to go play a few games and see if it’s transferring. So I think it’s good across the board. I think we all use it as teachable moments and we’re just trying to get the most out of those minutes that we can.”
Westfield has a solid group returning for next year, with seniors-to-be Ava Henson and Ashtin DeCraene, incoming junior Gigi Eldredge and sophomore-to-be Alyssa Crockett, who was a varsity starter as a freshman.
“I’m really excited about the direction we’re headed,” said Smith. “We should see some good things this year. I think the nice thing is everyone’s a year older. We’re a little more mature, hopefully a little smarter. I think it should be a good season for us.”
The Royals played Fort Wayne South Side, Rushville and a good Penn team. While Southeastern graduated a solid core of five seniors last year, there is plenty of talent returning, starting with Gatorade Player of the Year Sydney Parrish, a senior-to-be and recent University of Oregon commit.
Also back for the Royals will be incoming senior Jackie Maulucci, junior Lydia Self, and sophomores Ryan Viele and Makayla Hinshaw, both of whom saw some varsity minutes last year as freshmen.
“We’re trying to learn about ourselves right now,” said Southeastern coach Chris Huppenthal. “When you’re in a learning process, there’s going to be some growing pains. We’re going to go through some. As evident, at times during the last game, I thought we played well at times. There were times, not so well, especially defensively. But those are things that are going to change as the season goes. When we get our kids every day, we’re able to work on things and how we’re going to defend teams and attack teams. As far as this goes, there are some things that you really can’t fault on the girls because we just haven’t had enough time to practice.”
The Royals had a few incoming freshmen as well. While they are still learning about the speed and other things about the high school varsity level, Huppenthal said they did some good things for the HSE team.
“It’s important for them to see the speed of the game, the physicality of the game and what it’s like to play varsity basketball,” said Huppenthal.
Hamilton Heights took on teams from Tippecanoe Valley, Fort Wayne South and Rushville. The Huskies were missing some key varsity players, but did have familiar names like senior-to-be Bayleigh Runner and incoming sophomore Mykayla Moran, who played varsity as a freshman.
“The scores reflect that they were rough games, but from a program standpoint, it was really good for us, because we played a lot of younger girls, brought up some incoming freshmen and sophomores that got a lot of minutes,” said Heights coach Keegan Cherry.
Cherry credited Smith and Westfield with putting on a great tournament.
“The experience that we gained, the score doesn’t reflect maybe how good this was for us,” said Cherry.
The Westfield girls basketball team hosted the Westfield Summer Shootout on Saturday, which featured teams from across the state. Pictured for the Shamrocks are Ashtin DeCraene (14) and Ava Henson (12). (Richie Hall)