CHARLO — The Charlo Vikings roster for this season’s basketball campaign will read a lot of like its football roster.

The Vikings’ varsity basketball team will have a mixed group of experienced and younger players as they prepare to improve on an 11-10 season in which they finished fourth in the Class-C Western conference district last season.

Charlo Coach Gale Decker said he hopes to improve their mark in what he referred to as a “tough conference.”

“I think we have some younger kids that will get some varsity minutes earlier this season,” Decker said. “We will also have some good experience coming back and good depth. That is something that we hope to improve on headed into this season.”

An elongated football season in which the Vikings finished second in Class-C 8-man football prevented Charlo from fielding a whole team at practice. Decker said the football players who returned earlier this week will now field a whole team that finished fourth at the Class-C Western District Tournament last season.

“Our numbers are going to be down this year and we have a couple of players out with injuries that are going to miss the season,” Decker said.

Charlo will have post player Kane Shenyer playing in the post position and Zane Haflinger, who Decker said has “versatility.”

“Haflinger is one of those kids that you can play him anywhere,” Decker said. “He’s pretty solid because of his versatility. It remains to be seen where he will end up.”

The Vikings will also return their leading scorers from last season— junior shooting guard Tyson Petticrew and point guard sophomore Landers Smith.

Other players Decker said will have “significant varsity experience” will be Brady Fryberger, who missed last season with an injury, and sophomore perimeter player Garrett Vaughn.

“We lost a lot of our size from last season,” Decker said. “I think we will be better on the perimeter this year than we were last year.”

This summer the Vikings were able to work on their team chemistry.

“We had a bit of younger kids that got a chance to play together in the summer and I think that will help us this season,” Decker said. “I think we will look a little rough early in the year but as the year goes on, they will pick up a lot of chemistry stuff. It will carry over from the football season and it will be a pretty tight-knit group of kids. Once our football kids get their basketball legs under them and we solidify our offenses and defenses, we will be able to execute. Not having as many practices under our belt will hurt us earlier in the year but I think we will be able to catch up fast.”

Charlo will begin its season at the Salish Kootenai College and Ronan Tip-Off Tournament on Dec. 9-10. The Vikings will begin their season against Valley Christian Dec. 9 at 10:30 a.m. at Ronan High School’s gymnasium. They will follow that with a Dec. 10 game against Darby at SKC’s gymnasium.

“We have a good mixture of kids,” Decker said. “Zane and Kane are both great leaders as seniors with the younger kids and that is going to help. It will take some of the younger and less experienced kids a while to get up to speed. There are a lot of good younger kids that will show improvement as the year goes on. Our team is very coachable. They have good chemistry already there and that chemistry is going to be helpful.”