Healthy JFK girls return plenty of experience
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Last season was a rollercoaster for Kennedy.
Partway through the year, the Eagles lost star point guard Didi Ryan to an injury. Losing Ryan could have easily derailed its season, but Kennedy stuck together and was better for it.
Without their top scoring option, the Eagles had to reinvent themselves. It's never easy to completely reconfigure your team a little over a month before the postseason begins, but that's the position Kennedy found itself in.
The reward? The program's first-ever district title, in a 60-43 victory over Middlefield Cardinal.
Now, with Ryan returning -- alongside everyone but two seniors from Kennedy's regional squad -- the new-look Eagles hope to go back-to-back and lift another district trophy.
Entering his third year leading the program, Kennedy coach Marc Morgan is excited to see what this new group can do. More girls have more responsibilities, and it's made the team better.
"We're bringing back our point guard and things have changed. The evolution of our game has changed," Morgan said. "We relied on her a lot last year to handle the ball, and then when she got hurt, we had to figure out how to do it without her. Some of these kids have stepped up and taken on other responsibilities. That made ourselves better, and now you're adding your primary point guard back to your lineup, it should make things a lot easier.
"Now you hope when teams are pressing us in those scenarios, it shouldn't be as difficult, or, if Didi's not in the game, it shouldn't be an issue for us to bring pressure, because the rest of the kids can handle it now too. When she was healthy before, everything ran through her, and now it doesn't have to. Other kids can handle the ball now. They were forced to do it, so they learned to do it, so it will make us better in the long run. They all can contribute a lot. It doesn't have to be one or two people that score our points, because they all are pretty good, so it's a matter of finding the hot person."
And that could come from anywhere. Roster-wise, Kennedy has a great problem to have. The Eagles return five of their top six in the rotation from last season and are adding some game-ready freshmen to the mix.
"We're just trying to figure out pieces of the puzzle, but I'm not disappointed at all," Morgan said. "I thought we've come a long way since we started. We always get started off late, because soccer usually makes a pretty good run."
Senior Gianna Pompelia, who led the Eagles averaging 19 points per game, returns to the lineup and will be a force in the backcourt alongside Ryan.
With Hannah Myers and Laney Condoleon making strides in the offseason offensively, Kennedy has upped its firepower.
Freshman Claire Phillips has impressed during the offseason. Expect to see her log quality minutes for the Eagles. Freshmen Olivia and Sophia Tilley will also see time on the court this year.
The Eagles have gone independent this season which means the schedule was completely handpicked to make this team postseason-ready.
Aurora, Gilmour Academy, Boardman, Mooney, Mogadore, Laurel and Rootstown are all on the schedule this year.
Morgan says there will be some bumps in the road this season, and an underwhelming regular season record is possible, but it's all in preparation to make a deep run in the tournament.
"We always played teams that were at least better than us or close to our skill set," he said. "You're trying to challenge yourself so that you set that precedent for the tournament. I've always been of that mindset to try to make it as tough as possible. ... We just have to be okay with being around .500 in the regular season, knowing that it's getting us ready for the tournament."