By Terry Boehmker
NKyTribune sports reporter
Two years ago, Simon Kenton girls’ basketball coach Jeff Stowers started having joint practice sessions where varsity, junior varsity and freshmen players all work together on the same plays.
Stowers said that’s the reason the Pioneers are back in the hunt for an 8th Region championship this season, even though they have five first-year starters in the varsity lineup and mostly sophomores and freshmen on the roster.
“We can go 20 hard minutes (in practice) with our varsity and junior varsity out there and then pull them off and have our freshman do what we want them to do,” the coach said. “So it’s all a mirror image of what the varsity team does and everybody sees what they have to do and how hard they have to play.”
Last year, Simon Kenton made it to the 8th Region final with five seniors in the starting lineup and two more coming off the bench. When a team loses that much talent to graduation it usually goes into rebuilding mode. But the Pioneers got off to a 14-0 start this season and have a 20-2 record with five games remaining on their regular-season schedule.
The only team in the 8th Region that has a higher winning percentage is Shelby County with a 21-5 mark, but one of its losses was to Simon Kenton in the season opener.
The fact that Simon Kenton did not play in team camps over the summer makes its successful season even more surprising. Stowers started from scratch in pre-season practice and came up with another winning combination.
“Losing all those seniors from last year didn’t affect us because we came together as a team and we all knew what we needed to do,” said sophomore center Madi Meier. “We’ve had some games when we were down and we were playing completely awful, but we bounced back as a team because that’s just what we do and came out with the win.”
Meier is averaging 12 points and nine rebounds as Simon Kenton’s center. The team’s leading scorer is freshman point guard Ally Niece with a 16.0 average, followed by senior forward Maggi Bosse at 14.4. The other starting players are sophomore guard Kendyl Gilliam and senior forward Kelsey Schmiade.
Most of those players have been in the Simon Kenton basketball program for a few years, but Niece is a transfer student who played on the varsity team at Scott last season. She made the switch at a good time. One of the seniors the Pioneers lost to graduation last spring was point guard Abby Owings, who averaged a team-high 16.9 points per game.
“I just thought this was the right fit and the right coach for me,” Niece said of transferring to Simon Kenton. “I didn’t know all the girls very well, but I did play against some of them in AAU ball.”
Stowers said the addition of Niece “solidified the rest of the group” because the team needed an experienced floor leader to replace Owings. The Pioneers are averaging 60 points per game with the newcomer Niece making decisions at the point guard position.
“They’re awesome,” Niece said of playing with her new teammates. “Everyone knows what they’re good at it and what they’re supposed to do.”
The Pioneers actually spend most of their practice time on defense. Stowers always puts a heavy emphasis on that and this year’s team has responded by limiting opponents to 46.4 points per game.
“Even if we’re not on our game offensively, we’re going to get after you on the other end,” Stowers said. “We’re going to play defense. It’s ingrained in our girls to do that, but I don’t know if it’s ingrained in girls on other teams do that. I think that’s what gives us an edge.”
Simon Kenton has not won the 8th Region championship since 2009. The Pioneers lost in the regional final in 2010, 2013 and 2014. Stowers expects this year’s team to make another run at the title even though the players have little or no playoff experience.
“We have ‘Effort’ written up on the wall in our locker room with hearts all around it,” Niece said. “He’s always pointing at that and saying, ‘This is what we need right now. ’ Even when we’re not playing well and missing shots, he says as long as we play with heart and effort everything will be fine. And we all believe that.”
Terry Boehmker, NKyTribune sports writer, is former sportswriter and editor for The Kentucky Post. He is an award-winning writer with extensive background in both print and digital. Reach him at terryboe@yahoo.com.