Ronan Maidens' basketball team works on building chemistry

Ronan High School girls basketball coach Steve Woll puts a big emphasis on building team chemistry throughout the entire season.

Woll’s philosophical approach behind building team chemistry is to emphasize team unity early with the hope his team will play its best during the crucial portions of the season in February and March.

Woll also doesn’t like complacency and likes to have his team continue to battle to retain their positions.

Woll feels as though his team is starting to establish their positions on their respective roster that is also subject to change if a player earns a spot as they head into the second portion of the conference season.

“I think the girls are getting comfortable with their spots and their positions on the floor,” Woll said. “I didn’t think we shot the ball very well in our recent game against Mission percentage wise. That is something that we have to work on is making a higher percentage of our shots.”

Because Woll is always shuffling and modifying his team’s roster, he said he felt he’s gotten multiple players a lot of experience which should add to the Maidens’ depth.

“We got a lot of girls experience at the varsity level and we are trying to deepen our bench,” Woll said. “We have gotten them comfortable in their positions but they are always fighting for playing time because there is a lot of competition on our team.”

Woll said he puts an emphasis on his team improving on a weekly basis.

“We talked about it every week since the first day of practice, we are getting better and now we are going to see who can perform at the varsity level,” Woll said. “We continue to work on what our rotations might be and work on our defensive continuity. We need to work on our screening and rebounding a little bit. We also need to work on our free throw shooting and making layups for sure. That is one of my biggest concerns.”

As his team prepares to head into the second half of the conference schedule, he said he felt the Maidens will transition from Class B to Class A.

“All of the teams that we have coming up have all beat us in the first half of the schedule,” Woll said. “The element of surprise isn’t there so much (because we are familiar with the Class A teams). We have to go out and compete, try to get better and close the gap between the teams we’ve lost to. The second time around, we need to start to make the adjustments. The third time around it is for all of the marbles and that is kind of where we are at.”

Woll said he will watch game film of his upcoming opponents.

“Our kids have access to watch some of their games and I have access to know who is watching and who isn’t watching through our capability of our tech department,” Woll said. “We will sit down as a team, watch some film from the first game and find the strengths and weaknesses for the upcoming game. This will be the first week that we will have a second go-around.”

Woll said he will not accept moving from Class B to Class A as an excuse for his team now that they’ve seen the level of their competition once.

“I don’t think that is an excuse anymore,” Woll said. “We have to go out and play, try to compete and fit in, find out where we are at, and get better in order to compete night in and night out. They’ve accepted the changes and moved forward.”