By Maggie Brandenburg
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Away games can be a problem for even professional teams and players with several years under their belts. The team hits the road and arrives to an arena full of hostile fans intent on contributing to their demise. Away games offer an entirely different experience for sports teams, and after the women’s basketball team plays nine of its first 12 games at home, it will be faced with the majority of the rest of its season away from Carmel.

Head Coach Scott Bowen said, “It’d be nice to keep winning. We (have) got to keep on this roll. It’s also good to go on the road too and find out what your team is capable of doing as well. (We’ve) never really had this many home games at the start of the season, but we’ll take it and hopefully build on that and help us in the second half (of the season).”

Since the majority of those first games were at home, it has given the team members a chance to grow used to one another on the court. The friendly crowds of their home venue gave the teammates an opportunity to get comfortable with how the team would play together before they competed against rival teams and the opposing fans bent on distracting the Hounds.

Lauren McRoberts, varsity basketball forward and senior, said, “It’s good (to have several home games in the beginning of the season) just so we can get a feel for each other. We’ve got a home crowd so we don’t go to other places and just get heckled up.”

The team enjoyed a successful start to its season, winning its first five games. Those early wins provides the momentum to carry the team through tougher away games, but Bowen was quick to point out that being on a roll is much more important come tournament time, as the team learned last year on its way to a State championship victory.

“I’m not sure getting on a roll now really means a whole lot, as we found out last year,” Bowen said. “Getting on a roll at the end of the year is the most important part, so that’s hopefully when we’re playing our best basketball, when tournament time comes.”