Noxon basketball readies for 2015-16 sports season

by Adam Robertson Clark Fork Valley
| December 3, 2015 3:22 PM

NOXON – The Noxon Red Devils have begun preparing for the basketball season with both teams showing a good balance for age and experience.

It is still fairly early, but practices have been going well. According to Bart Haflich, head coach for both basketball teams, the boys and girls teams have both been working on getting the fundamentals of the sport down.

Neither team is very experienced in varsity basketball. Haflich recalled there were only a few students who returned from last year’s team this year and the others were all new to the varsity level.

There is a fairly good balance for the age of the players on both teams. Haflich noted the Lady Red Devils are gaining a number of good players from the middle school team; the boys will also be getting some brand new players. The coach felt both teams had a good spread across the four years.

“I wouldn’t say we have a huge crop of freshmen on either the boys or the girls team,” he said. “We’re pretty even throughout both sides as far as upper classmen and under classmen go.”

There are approximately 18 players on the boys team and 14 on the girls team. These numbers will allow both teams to field a strong game and have plenty of players for substitutions in case someone is injured or unable to make a game. They are also ideal numbers for fielding a junior varsity team.

The teams have been working hard in practices; the coach hopes to see improvements every day as they prepare for their first games. So far, they have been working on getting the game’s fundamentals ingrained and memorized.

“We’re trying to get that stuff ingrained and hopefully by the end of the season, hopefully we’re in the mix,” said Haflich.

The Noxon basketball teams both have their first games later this week, at the Frenchtown tournament on December 4 and 5. Haflich felt they would be going up against pretty strong teams this year, but was not terribly concerned with them at this time. He said his main concern was what his team is doing, rather than what other teams have been doing to prepare.