With the Sectional tournament only days away, the seniors on the women’s basketball team are putting the struggles of the regular season behind them and focusing on bringing their best in the Sectional. Led by senior guards Blaire Langlois and Abby Dean, the team is looking to make a run in the postseason.

“We lost some very tough games in the season, more than we had hoped. But our goal isn’t to finish with a great record,” Dean said. “Once the tournament starts, the regular season has no bearing whatsoever. The goal now is Sectionals.”

The team is coming off of a year when it made it to the Semistate where it lost an overtime game against Southport.

This year, the team struggled early in the season due to injuries but is now hoping to make a run in the tournament. Though the regular season did not turn out how the team had wished, Head Coach Scott Bowen said he is optimistic about the postseason if the team just plays the type of basketball it is capable of.

“We’ve been talking all year; we want to head into the postseason and have a chance to win our Sectional,” Bowen said. “If we can improve our rebounding and defensive intensity and continue to take care of the ball, we will put ourselves in position to knock off one of these teams that are deemed the favorites.”

Two players who will be key in determining the Greyhound’s postseason fate are Langlois and Dean. Both girls are standout players and are considered some of the best in the state. Langlois, a player on the All-Star team last year and a Butler commit, is one of the leading candidates for Miss Basketball, an award given by The Indianapolis Star to the best player in Indiana each year. The award is based on the votes of coaches and athletic directors across the state. Langlois hopes to gain enough attention to come away with the award at the end of the season.

“It’s a huge honor to be Miss Basketball,” Langlois said. “Hopefully I’ve been playing well enough and hard enough that coaches around the state believe that I deserve the title.”

On the court, both Langlois and Dean have made quite an impact. Langlois scored her 1000th career point in January and remains one of the best in Indiana. Bowen said he views her as a scoring machine who is a great teammate and a hard worker. Dean continues to impress on the court, working hard in practice and scoring points when it counts. It is not beyond question for her to attend the top 40 All-Star workout. But it is off the court that Dean, Langlois and the other seniors on the team impress Bowen.

“Our seniors have done a great job of leading. These girls, you couldn’t ask for a better group of senior ladies to have the younger girls look up to as we go about the season,” Bowen said.

Dean echoed Bowen’s comments, stating that the senior ladies best attribute was the example they were to the younger players.

“I think me, Blaire and all the other seniors bring a lot of positive energy to the team. We all work very hard in practice to show that everyone else on the team needs to as well,” Dean said.

Encouragement, leadership and a commitment to excellence in practice and games from the seniors on the women’s basketball team drive the entire team to play with greater intensity. As the team gears up for the Sectional, the seniors are confident that their hard work will pay off.

“Sectionals is no doubt going to be very tough,” Dean said. “But our team believes in each other, and we know how close we were to beating some of these teams. I definitely believe we can win the Sectional.”