By CHARLES PENDELL

charles.pendell@mcleansborotimesleader.com

McLEANSBORO — The Hamilton County Lady Foxes basketball team is starting the 2009-10 season with a lot of young players again.

Lady Foxes head coach Clint Winemiller begins his second season at the helm of the girls program.

“We are extremely young again this season,” Winemiller said. “We only have two seniors, four juniors, nine sophomores and three freshmen in the program.

“Being so young, what are our kids going to be like? What are we going to expect to get out of them, and who is going to step up? What are we going to expect when we are going to start three sophomores, one senior and one junior? What are we going to get from the kids that have very little or no varsity experence? We’ll soon find out.”

Last season was a learning experence for the girls in green as they could only manage a 7-19 record, but many of the games they lost were extremely close.

“Last year, after Christmas, I thought our kids were in a lot of games,” Winemiller said. “We were 7-19 and we probably lost seven or eight games by less than five points, so we were looking at being almost .500 with a young group, only two seniors and not many used to playing varsity basketball, a transition to my style from everyone else’s in the past, and I thought we were starting to get better. We took our licking to some of the teams that were very good last year. We’ll just have to see about this season.

Winemiller’s team is hosting the Hamilton County Lady Foxes Basketball Tournament this week, having opened its season Monday night.

“This will be a good thing to get four or five games in a week, just to see what we need to work on,” the coach said. “I have my ideas, but I’d like to see, when we get in actual games, what we have to get better at. And I’m sure we’ll improve again this year, because those kids will grow up pretty fast and from the time we start until we get to February.”

Lost to graduation from last season’s squad were Molly Hathaway and Bethany Anselment.

This 2009-10 campaign has two seniors back for their final year in 5-foot, 10-inch center Cathy Martin and 5-foot-7 guard Alexis York.

There are four juniors for Winemiller to choose from in 6-1 center Sarah Scott, 6-0 guard Anna Moreton, 5-10 post player Natalie Anselment and 5-7 forward Krystal Knight, who will be sidelined for a while after breaking her wrist in practice.

There are nine sophomores in the fold, many of whom anchored last season’s 14-1 junior varsity squad. This sophomore group went 17-0 as seventh- graders and 24-2 as eighth -graders.

Sophomores that Winemiller can look to are 5-8 guard Laci Laughard, 5-8 guard Veronica Gay, 5-10 forward Marcie Niekamp, 5-9 guard Emma Moreton, 6-3 center Whitney Craddock, 5-6 guard Alyssa Winemiller, 5-6 guard Jaci Gray, 5-10 forward Faith Irvin and 5-6 guard Ali Zachman.

At this writing, Zachman’s playing status was uncertain; she hurt her knee and may be sidelined for a short time.

“We have two seniors and right now three juniors to choose from since Knight broke her wrist, and we have nine sophomores and we’ll rely on six to seven of those,” Winemiller said.

“We’ll probably rotate a lot of kids this first week to see who is playing well and just the fact that we’re not in the best of shape. It’s probably my fault that we are not in very good shape,” the coach said. “We played for 90 minutes the other day up and down the court with the only rest coming when we shot free throws, and we were gassed. We’ll improve as the season goes on, but right now we are nowhere near where we really need to be.

“We’ll play a lot of kids this season, but it won’t be five in and five out, it will probably be one or two kids here and do something like that.”

After their annual round- robin tournament to begin the year, the Lady Foxes will get into the Black Diamond Conference schedule, taking on conference foes in Carmi, Johnston City, Eldorado and Vienna before the holiday. They will also tangle with three nonconference programs in Benton, Harrisburg and Herrin, then will — for the first time — head to the Benton Tournament just after Christmas.

In January, the Lady Foxes will meet up with annual powerhouse Okawville on the road, then will return to conference action with Fairfield and Johnston City.

In mid-January, the Lady Foxes will head to the weeklong Eldorado tournament. The Lady Foxes will then set their sights on the remaining four conference games and the Diamond Duels contest and play nonconference foe Woodlawn in early February as their regular season comes to an end.

“Pinckneyville is probably the tournament favorite,” Winemiller said. “All the rest of the teams have lost a lot of good players. Pinckneyville returns three starters from last years’ 20-10 squad and nine returning letter winners and they won the tournament last year. Conferencewise, Johnston City lost a ton of kids to graduation, Eldorado only won one or two games last season, but they have a new coach. They have many of their scorers back. Fairfield lost several kids and one of their post players didn’t come out for basketball. Carmi lost a lot of kids, but they return their two guards back and they have added a player from the Baptist children’s home. Vienna lost a couple of kids, but they have a post player back.

“We had real good games with Vienna on the junior varsity level. It will be interesting. It is different now because we’re so used to kids just walking out there with shirts just clinging to them because they are so full of sweat and their heads are drenched and that’s not the case in girls basketball. Everything is just a little slower and not that they’re not doing well, but it’s just not as fast as the boys.

“Nonconference, Woodlawn will be pretty good, and Herrin, too . They lost a lot of good kids, but they will be all right. Okawville lost a lot of kids and their longtime coach. So our schedule will be just as difficult as it was last year. I think Carmi will be the favorite in the conference for the simple fact they have won it the last four years. Until someone knocks them off, they have to be the favorites. We could be a contender, but you have to take care of business at home and hope you can beat two or three teams on the road. If we can do that, we’ll be right there. You have to win your home games in the conference.”

Each year the teams have goals they make for the new season. Coach Winemiller also has some important goals that he would like his Lady Foxes to achieve.

“I personally want us to be better than we were last year; that would be the biggest thing," Winemiller said. “I’d like to have a better record than we did last year. I want us to compete the whole year. Losing and not competing bothers me; losing and competing are two different things. And as long as we compete, I’ll be happy. We have kids that are pretty competitive. Everybody always refers to the sophomores, as they have had a lot of good experience, but we have some juniors that are going to help us and we have two seniors that will hopefully come around a little bit for us, too. The girls are doing a lot better.”

Winemiller welcomes a new assistant coach into the program as coach Jason Hall takes over the junior varsity squad this season. Hall replaces Dustin Haile, who resigned at the end of last season.

Hall will have many of the younger kids playing for him and will welcome three freshmen to the high school program: 5-foot-9 guard Emily McCullough, 5-7 guard Kaela Kiefer and 5-10 center Aeriel Wilson.

The Lady Foxes' season got started Nov. 23; the Lady Foxes will play Pinckneyville on Nov. 28 at 7:30 p.m. to finish up the round-robin tournament.