Young Devils team plans on statement season

Nov. 27—WILSON CREEK — The Wilson Creek Devils girls basketball team is bringing a young, but talented group of players onto the court this season. Jeff Sackmann returns as the team's head coach and plans to build off of last year's successes.

"We had a great group of girls and really had a mixture of a couple seniors that had played a lot and a few other girls who had never played before," said Sackmann. "We just really kind of came together as a team and had a lot of fun."

The Devils finished the last season with a 13-9 record earning third in the Central Washington B league and made a deep run in the postseason. Their success in the regular season allowed for Wilson Creek to host Entiat where they would win 36-27.

Wilson Creek would then fall to the number two seeded Pateros to go into the consolation match before being eliminated in the district tournament. While the ending was not what they had hoped for, he said it was an overall positive outlook for the program.

Last year was also Sackmann's first year as the head coach and said that he enjoyed the challenge that being a varsity coach brought and that it was a great learning experience in terms of figuring out how to manage time both on and off the court.

"I've learned the key to a good practice is preparation," said Sackmann. "I put a lot of time and effort into making good practice plans so when we get there it's organized and we can be efficient."

The Devils graduated three seniors and a foreign exchange student from Germany in the offseason of their eight-player squad last season, the coach said. With no seniors of their four returners this season, the team will have a much younger team that still has some postseason experience.

Lila Sackmann is a junior returner to Wilson Creek this year who made Second Team All-League last season and was a key member of the team with her leadership and skills on both ends of the coach. Another key returner is sophomore Kaydence Leslie who has shown great potential on the court and had a strong performance in the last four games of the previous season.

Sackmann said he is feeling good about the prospects of this young squad as the roster has around nine girls as of their first practice. Each of the players displayed a great attitude and showed that they are willing to work hard this season.

The first thing that he said was instilled into the players at the start of practices this season is to just focus on improving every day.

"We're going to work hard, we're going to have fun, and we're just going to strive to get better every day," said Sackmann. "If each girl on the team improves every day and then as a team we grow together and get better every day, that's all we can ask for."

The Devils lead the season off with a home game against Columbia on Dec. 2 at 6 p.m.