After barely missing a trip to the state tournament in Columbia, with an overtime loss in the quarterfinals, last year’s girls basketball team had the most successful season in FHC history. This season, the team is hoping to repeat the success of last year and possibly improve upon their achievements.

Two of the top scorers from last year’s team, Sharese Jones and Brea Gegg, graduated, leaving holes for this year’s team to fill. With the return of senior Kristen Warncke and new players for the team, Coach Brian Ricker expects the team to rebound quickly.

“We had a real good year last year and left them big shoes to fill,” Coach Ricker said. “Replacing players as good as [Sharese] is is hard, but we have a lot of different kids that can score. I think we can make up for her loss with a lot of diversity in scoring.”

Not only has the team suffered the loss of important players, they also lost their assistant coach of nine years, Ron Jones. Coach Todd Berck is taking Jones’ position, which Coach Ricker says will be a good replacement for Jones.

“He is going to be a positive addition to the team. He has had experience coaching basketball and he’ll do a good job working with the “bigs” which are the inside players,” Coach Ricker said.

This week was the first week of practice and there were no cuts made to the team. The team will be practicing every weekday until their first game at the St. Charles tournament the week of Nov. 26.