Winning games and being competitive in the KCI Conference has been a rare occurrence in the past quarter century for the West Platte girls’ basketball team, but a 12-13 record last year put the Lady Blue Jays back on the map.
West Platte senior Colby Shepardson will be the one of the top-2 players the Lady Blue Jays will rely on this winter.
In the four seasons from 2018 to 2021, West Platte had combined for 14 wins, but head coach John Kruse helped the squad nearly match that entire win total in his third year last winter alone. Along with snapping long losing streaks to multiple teams in the KCI Conference, the Lady Blue Jays tied for third place overall in the conference.
“I went 25 years back and couldn’t find a team that won more than we did last year, so coming off that, our expectations are pretty high,” Kruse said. “We return a lot of our key contributors from that team, so dealing with those early season expectations and all the things that come along with that is a new challenge for this group, for sure.”
West Platte also won its first postseason game since 2014 last winter and only lost one starter. Junior Avery Holmes will fill in the vacant spot in the starting lineup, joining Julia Pattison, Colby Shepardson, Madisyn Matlick and Libby Vandal.
“We have quite a bit of experience. We had two all-district and all-conference players last year in Colby Shepherdson, who’s a senior now, and Julia Pattison, who’s a junior. Madisyn Matlick and Libby Vandel started every game for us last year, so four of our starting five logged significant minutes,” Kruse said.
Holmes and Sam Baker – who is now a sophomore – also bring plenty of experience to the court as the duo were on the court often in the past. Maddie McMillan, Klaira Groom and Blair McHenry are a few players who didn’t play a ton last year but will add depth to the Lady Blue Jays.
“Our top-six has a ton of experience and even though some of them are young, they have a lot of varsity time and contributed in various ways over the past year. That’ll help quite a bit and we expect even more out of them this year, and we know they’re more than capable of delivering,” Kruse said.
Each year under Kruse, West Platte has improved its win total from two wins in 2019-20 to seven wins in 2020-21 and 12 wins in 2021-22. The Lady Blue Jays will look to keep that trend going this winter.