The Hampton-Dumont-CAL girls basketball team had a senior-dominant roster that led the team to a 21-3 record and regional final appearance. Of the eight full-time rotation players, five were seniors.
Freshman MacKenzy Valley was the lone underclassman starter. Head Coach Miranda Stafford expects Valley to take on a large role as one of the top contributors next season.
“They got big experience, talking about that Estherville game, there were nine seniors that started that game,” Stafford says. “Estherville started five seniors, we started four seniors, and MacKenzy was the only underclassmen as a freshman starting, and we put her on their best player. That’s some big shoes for a freshman to come in. And I thought she played really, really well that game. She was composed. So we’re gonna look to her to kind of lead us. She’s gonna play a lot of basketball in the offseason. So she’s gonna continue to get that experience and grow that leadership.”
Valley scored 5.7 points per game and was tied with Charlee Morton as the second-leading rebounder with 4.6 per game.
Stafford says after coming off the bench this season, Addison Aalbers and Madison Heilskov will see expanded opportunities.
“Addie and Madison are kids that, Addie was a kid that was like, eh, I might play last year, to a kid that after the season last year missed no offseason workouts. Madison as well, they put a lot of time in with this group of seniors. They bought in, they accepted their role, they were ready to come in off the bench. Some games that was 15 minutes, some games that was four minutes. And never was there any question as to why am I not playing? Why did I play this much and not this much? That’s huge for them. They got some good experience. They had some good leaders to kind of show them the way. And I’m gonna look forward to them as juniors coming in to play some big minutes for us and pick up some of those expectations where our seniors left off and kind of fill some of those holes.”
The Bulldogs had their most wins in a season since 2014-2015.
