Harrisburg girls basketball coach Ryan Richardson said “We lost to Eugene last year in the district championship game as we were playing our best basketball of the year. This season, we’ve really just picked upright where we left off.”

Losing only Senior Zoe Carr, we’re returning players from last year that played significant varsity minutes, not just a little bit, but significant. Then, we have a freshman class coming in that have already played a significant amount of minutes for us, so we feel good about our depth and where we are going this year.” Leading that freshman class will be Emma Fisher. “She’s strong for being a freshman and has a motor that doesn’t stop, almost too big of a motor sometimes. Sometimes her body goes so much faster than she can process the game but as a coach, you’d much rather have to pull in the reins than try to get them to go faster. She’ll have some growing pains and is going to have to figure out how this next level moves. She’s skipping the junior varsity level for the most part, too, she has a big learning curve ahead of her but we’ve had all the Fisher sisters in our program already, so they kind of know the expectations and we know what to expect from them, so she’ll be able to catch on real quick and be able to contribute. Emma’s older sister, senior Olivia is coming off a torn ACL. Richardson said “we’re interested to see where she’s at. She’s worked hard to rehab so she could get back. She’s had a great Cross country season, even coming off the ACL, so we again have high expectations of her.”

“After having won almost every award you could think of last year,  senior Baylie Combs is coming back. We know a lot of teams will focus on her. She knows her role on the team, she has to be an aggressive player on the floor for us this year, an aggressor on the offensive end and she’ll try to get her shots up every night.” Richardson said.

After signing a letter of intent on Friday to play basketball with the Stephens Stars in Columbia, Kailey Franklin will be returning to the court for her senior year at Harrisburg. Richardson said “Kailey has been a big time outside threat for us that a lot of teams will key on. She’s one of those players that wherever she is on the court, you can hear other teams yelling ‘shooter, shooter.’ We’ll really need for her to knock down some big shots in big moments and play some defense for us.

Two sophomores, Carli Ellis and Brecca Thornhill started last year as freshmen. Richardson said “with that experience, they should be playing at a junior or senior level. We’re excited they’ve developed as quickly as they have.”

Adding to the depth of this Harrisburg squad will be seniors Izzy McMahan and Hailey Emanuel. “They will split time and have worked really hard for the minutes they have gotten and haven’t had a real easy road to get to this point. They have each stepped up and know their strengths in the game. They both know their role and they will not try to do more than what their role is, so we’re excited about that.”

Richardson said the Lady Bulldogs “will be all about tempo, every which way of the game, we want to get up and down the court and press. We feel we have a ton of athletes on this team that will be hard for other teams to match for an entire length of a game. We think that’s our strong point where we can take advantage or teams.”

When pressed for a prediction, Richardson said, “I only hope we get to play a full schedule and we show up every night and we play our style of game and put forth our best effort. We know it’s not going to be a perfect season or perfect play, but we truly believe and our girls understand that this season is all about who can take a bad situation and make the most out of it. So we’re prepping every day to practice in chaos and practice in unprecedented situations and we hope that preparing like that and preparing for the unexpected will help us out.”