By Jeremy McDonald

jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com

BEAVERTON, Ore.–  The Sprague Girls Basketball team had their moments to start Summer Basketball on both sides of the ball this past weekend in Beaverton.  Head Coach Trevor Bodine points to how well the moved the ball really well against McMinnville and took advantage of their zone defense.  Defensively they got a ways to go in locating the best player, the biggest threat, points Bodine as the Olympians begin their Summer slate.

But they’ll continue to improve through the Summer and into the Winter season ahead.  Bodine is pleased with how aggressive his offense has been as he looks to simplify things around his core of Makenna Trussell, Reese Beyrouty and Alyssa Meza were playing in this weekend’s Summer Basketball games.  All three were Mountain Valley Conference Honorable Mention this past Winter as Sprague went 4-19 and 1-13 in MVC play.

“We’ll get better and we are better.  Offensively we’re more aggressive, more attack and moving the ball a little bit better.  I’m trying to simplify things this year,”  Bodine starts.  “We ran a lot of set plays last year just because we had too to get people open.  But we’re going to try to run more of an open-style this year and a lot more movements.  We shot really well yesterday against Sunset.  We hit quite a few three’s.  Reese Beyrouty pretty much dominated in the paint in that game, which was good. Overall skill-level, we’re getting better.

“We got some returners, we only graduated two, so we got most of our squad back. We got Carley (Skogstad) coming in, who’s injured right now. She’s our point and she’ll help a lot quite a bit, she’s an incoming freshman.”

Bodine spoke of Skogstad’s skill, especially for her age as she makes the move to High School and is expected to contribute when she’s healthy and ready to go this upcoming season.

But the thing now, and the fun thing about Summer Ball, is being able to improve and get better. Bridging the previous season with the next.  And with Sprague playing in a Valley-wide Summer Basketball League, with Varsity games every Wednesday, the Olys hope to build off of their first weekend of the Summer moving forward.

“It’s really nice.  We’re able to work together very well and pass the ball, work off-screens.  So it’s nice to have that core group.  We just gotta keep growing and keep getting better each game,” Trussell said.  “We’re very relaxed and we can take our time and really see the court.  I think we really need to know when to pass.  We need to work on our passing, we can always get better at passing and find the open people.  Pass out of traps…It showed what we really need to work on and what we hope to get better at.  It also showed us our strengths and what we need to improve upon those even more.”

Photos By Jeremy McDonald