Lady Pirate captains chat about the season

POLSON - Last time the Polson girls' basketball team went to state, the current varsity team was in middle school.

The Lady Pirates open the Class A girls basketball state tournament at 6:30 p.m. today against Sidney.

Before leaving for Hamilton, senior Nicole Davey and juniors Breanne Kelley and Sierra Pete sat down to discuss the season thus far and the upcoming tournament.

How excited are you guys to go to state?

Nicole Davey: "It's pretty cool. I've never been there, so it's kinda a new thing

What is it like to have a whole week extra before heading to the tournament?

ND: "It's kind of nice, but I kinda just want to go in there and do it."

Are you getting anxious?

Sierra Pete: "Yeah. It makes it hard to wait."

ND: "With the boys playing, you kind of want to be playing too."

Is it cool that both the boys and girls made it to state this year?

ND: "It's pretty awesome. We'll go cheer on the boys."

If you go cheer them on, will the boys return the favor?

SP: "They better."

ND: "I hope so."

SP: "They better get their butts there."

Your team wore pink jerseys for your last home game, was there any special reason?

ND: "Last year, we did this pink out thing because we had a couple moms on the team that had breast cancer. This year it was for senior night, for the big bad senior."

SP: "We have them, so we might as well use them."

Nicole, what is it like to be the only senior on the team?

ND: "It's not too bad. I get along with everyone a lot. I miss my class, compared to volleyball, we had a lot of fun."

Sierra and Breanne, what do you think next year will be like when there will be more seniors?

SP: "It'll be crazy."

ND: "You guys will be better, I think.

SP: "Yea, hopefully we will be better."

ND: "You better. You're only losing one girl, who doesn't even do that much. Except for rebounds."

SP: "It's a hard thing to fill. We'll lose our height. She's like our tall girl, which is kind of sad."

ND: "Maybe you'll have this crazy freshman, who is on steroids. Maybe. "

What has your team been doing off the court to prepare?

Breanne Kelley: "Go to bed early."

ND: "That's not really working too well."

SP "Have you been going to bed early?

BK: "Uh. Maybe."

ND "Try to eat healthy, but I don't know. It's seriously hard, for me at least. I think we are going to try to do a team dinner, or something like that for some team bonding."

What are your team rituals before games?

SP: "Music."

ND: "Music."

BK: "Dance."

What kind of music does the team listen to?

SP: "We have a square dance in the locker room."

Seriously?

SP: "No. We like all sorts of stuff."

ND: "Mostly, it's random stuff, everything's random."

BK: "We don't really have an actual warm-up. We just laugh."

SP: "[Nicole] does the stanky leg every once in a while."

When you are packing to go to an away tournament, what are the most important things to bring besides your basketball stuff?

ND: "Clean underwear."

BK: "Your lucky underwear."

ND: "It would be my lucky sports bra, but I can't wear that because it's a different color."

SP: "Rubber bands."

ND: "I just have a bunch of clothes in my bag, just in case. I never know what I want to wear after the games."

BK: "Extra clothes."

SP: "iPod."

ND: "iPod."

BK: "Music."

What does the team do between games?

ND: "We try to stay focused, but we are such a giggly team."

BK: "We just laugh and goof around."

So, you don't take yourselves too seriously?

BK: "We try too."

SP: "That is our way of taking ourselves seriously. If we get too serious, we freak out."

ND: "If you're too serious, you psych yourself out."

How do your coaches deal with your giggly-ness? Do they giggle with you?

BK: "They do."

SP: "Or they just yell at us."

ND: "Our coaches are like little kids. They goof around too."

SP: "Except in the locker room, like after a loss or if we are doing bad, than we get in trouble."

ND: "Yea, that doesn't go over too well. That happened once in the beginning of the year."

Have you learned when to laugh and when not to?

ND: "Yeah. [Breanne] would know better because one is her dad. She probably gets it at home."

BK in mock seriousness: "Yeah. I can't laugh at home."

SP: "No fun at home. Not allowed."

BK in mock seriousness: "This is the only time I can have fun."

Looking back on the season, what were some of your favorite games?

BK: "Big Sky."

SP: "Big Sky."

ND: "Big Sky. Best game ever."

BK: "Beating Libby at home was fun, too."

ND: "I liked playing in the pink jerseys, but we played really bad."

SP: "Such a bad game."

BK: "We could not grab the ball. Nobody could. It was like lotion."

ND: "Unlike the Big Sky game."

SP: "It was fun. We weren't expected to win. I think that's when we realized we were pretty good."

Going into that game, what was your mentality?

SP: "Scared as crap."

BK: "So nervous. Our junior varsity team got their butts kicked."

SP: "I remember talking with Bre ‘we are so nervous'."

ND: "I remember thinking ‘It's okay. We're not expected to win, so if we go out and lose its okay'."

SP: "We didn't expect ourselves to really do anything."

Who is your biggest rival in the conference?

SP: "I don't know. Everyone rivals us."

ND: "Besides Ronan, because they are so close."

BK: "Libby."

ND: "In volleyball and basketball, Libby. Their crowd is so loud."

So, what was it like to beat Libby in the first game of divisionals?

ND: "It was awesome. I was like looking up at the score board and was like ‘Whoa'."

SP: "It was just what we had to do."

ND: "It was nice in that first quarter. We are always slow that first quarter."

What were your goals this year?

ND: "To go to state."

SP: "I wanted to get Nicole to stay because she's our senior and now I have to watch, so I really want them to do well, do something and not just show up."

ND: "To try and play with the other teams."

What will be your biggest challenge at state?

ND: "I think being able to handle who we play. We don't really know what we are going into because we have never been there."

BK: "Being short."

SP "Our height can be a problem but we're fast."

So you use your speed to combat the other team's height?

ND: "I think that's what helps on those bigger courts. We can use our speed to our advantage."

SP: "We each, individually have a pretty good amount of skills, there's a lot of teams where's there's only two girls who are their top scorers."

BK: "It's really spread out."

SP: "We are all usually up in the teens or double digits."

BK: "Some one will score and someone will rebound and someone will steal. It's good. It makes a good team."

So, is it an advantage to have your scoring spread out?

BK: "Yea."

ND: "Definitely. If you look at a lot of other teams, there will be a girl who will score twenty-something points and everybody else has, like, three or five."

SP: "It's harder to stop a team where everybody scores."

Do you think your team is favored or underdogs entering the tournament?

BK: "Underdogs."

ND: "Underdogs. We haven't been there in like forever, it seems like. People will be like ‘who are they? I didn't even know there was a Polson.'"

SP: "I like being underdogs. It's like that Big Sky game again."

ND: "No pressure, or a little bit but you might as well go all out."

SP: "Like against Columbia Falls. They kind of tromped on us all season. We went into the championship game as underdogs and everyone thought they were going to blow us out and they didn't."

What did it take to make it this far?

SP: "We've changed a lot at practice."

BK: "Experimenting."

ND: "I guess what helps us this year is that we play a lot of up and down, we scrimmage which helps."

SP: "Last year we did a lot more training, just more things where you had to actually sit there and do work outs. This year, because we can run, we actually does a lot more setup."

BK: "We do a lot more defense this year. Now we kind of match the team we play."

What did it take to get along on the court?

ND: "You can tell there's no selfish girl out there."

SP: "There's no friction on the court."

ND: "You can tell that everyone wants to be a part of it and share and they are happy for some who does great and not like ‘gosh I wish I scored 20 points.'"

BK: "We encourage each other."

SP: "Last year, we weren't able to talk about what our problems on the court were. This year we can sit down and figure it out."

ND: "I think we know when to be serious and when to joke around. Last year, it was just serious."

BK: "We can criticize each other without getting mad or hurt."

What are you doing to pump yourselves up for state?

BK "Team dinner."

ND: "Probably that. I think we talk a lot and say "yea we can do this' and get pumped up that way. The loud music kind of gets me going. I don't know about you guys."

SP: "I think other than that, we all individually think about it."

ND: "Everyone kind of goes home and knows what needs to be done. Get to bed early, focus, we have a big week coming up."