By John Raffel
Correspondent
MATTAWAN — Rob Kuhtz ready to have a strong season with Mattawan’s girls basketball team as the new coach.
Last year the team was 11-10, 3rd in SMAC West. The season featured the retirement of varsity coach Chad Conklin after 32 years involved in basketball, most, if not all, at Mattawan as JV or varsity girls coach.
Mattawan graduated 1,000 point scorer and Kalamazoo MLive Dream Team Selection
Delaney Elsmore and graduated Zhia Martin Kalamazoo MLive Honorable Mention.
Key players will be;
Caitlin Ryan, sophomore, Guard, returning starter from last year.
Chloe Nellenbach, junior, forward, returner from last year.
Claire Winans, senior, guard, returner from last year;
Lauren Fitzgerald, senior, center, returner from last year
Charlotte Douglass, freshman, center.
What expectations do you have of your team this season?
“We have a young and inexperienced team that only has four players that played
high school basketball last year,” Kuhtz said. “We will improve throughout the course of the
year and expect to be playing our best basketball in February/March.
“This group is extremely coachable and has great senior leaders. This group needs experience in their roles and playing together.”
In the conference “Lakeshore and Portage Central should be very strong teams again this year that battle for the division championship. Our schedule is challenging early on with some of the area’s best teams Paw Paw, Kalamazoo Central, and Lakeshore all before winter break. These matchups will provide us a great opportunity to identify weaknesses and grow.”
