Wellington ready to improve on last season's record

A new coach and an influx of junior var­sity play­ers that went 15-5 in 2010 has the Welling­ton Dukes girls var­sity bas­ket­ball team in a posi­tion to move for­ward fol­low­ing last year’s 5-16 record. After serv­ing as an assis­tant to Marty Younkoff last year, Chris Reutepohler becomes the man in charge of the Lady Dukes. This is Reutepohler’s first head coach­ing job at the var­sity level but the for­mer Huron Tiger is ready after years of play­ing high school and col­lege ball as well as coach­ing at the high school level.

“I had served as the fresh­men boys coach and then an oppor­tu­nity came up last year to be an assis­tant for the girls team,” Reutepohler said. “I talked it over with my wife and decided to try it for a year. When Marty retired the oppor­tu­nity was there to coach the var­sity and it seemed like a good fit for me,” he said. “It was a lit­tle over­whelm­ing at first but I think it’s going along good now.”

Reutepohler, who will be assisted by Sherry Bar­low and Katie Street, has three seniors on the team and all three have var­sity expe­ri­ence. How­ever, Reutepohler is con­fi­dent that the seniors will pro­vide the lead­er­ship nec­es­sary to help the Dukes improve upon last year’s record.

“We might be short on let­ter win­ners but we have lead­ers,” he said. “With a young team you need to have peo­ple that are going to step up and lead the way. Our seniors will pro­vide us with that type of leadership.”

Seniors Vic­to­ria Reisinger, Olivia Wulfhoop and Megan Brasee accounted for 17 points and 20 rebounds per game last year and Reutepohler expects to see an increase in those numbers.

“All three girls have improved since last year,” said Reutepohler. “They have put in the time and the hard work in the off sea­son. I expect that they will all see increases in their aver­ages this year.”

Reutepohler expects Reisinger (sec­ond team all-county in 2010) to be a lit­tle more dan­ger­ous now that she has added some new post moves to her reper­toire. Wulfhoop has also improved in the off­sea­son and the key for her is to show some con­sis­tency from game to game.

“Olivia had some nice games last year but she couldn’t main­tain it,” said Reutepohler. “If she can stay con­sis­tent game in and game out it is going to help us.”

Brasee “does a lot well” accord­ing to Reutepohler and he expects her rebound­ing to be one of the strong points of her game as “she should get a lot of put back baskets.”

The expe­ri­ence level falls dra­mat­i­cally from there but not the tal­ent level as Karly Rollin, a sopho­more who received some var­sity min­utes as a fresh­man, takes over the start­ing point guard position.

“Karly is going to grow up fast,” said Reutepohler. “She’s done a good job so far in the pre­sea­son but she is going to have to adjust to the reg­u­lar sea­son. I think she will be able to han­dle it.”

A trio of juniors – Erin Reisinger, Grace Doo­ley and Raven Howard – all bring some­thing dif­fer­ent to the table for the Dukes. Reisinger moves from post to guard and is prob­a­bly the best 3-point shooter on the team. Doo­ley never stops doing the lit­tle things that don’t show up in the score­book but give her team a chance to win. Howard’s tal­ents are raw right now but Reutepohler believes that the ceil­ing is unlim­ited for her once she gets it all together.

Reutepohler expects the Dukes to play a more up tempo style of offense as he looks to take advan­tage of the Dukes ath­leti­cism. The abil­ity to score shouldn’t be an issue for Welling­ton while defen­sively they are going to play man-to-man and press as they hope to take advan­tage of turnovers by their opponents.

The sched­ules sets up favor­ably for the Dukes and the sea­son starts Sat­ur­day when they host New Lon­don at 2:30 pm. Reutepohler is ready now that he has set­tled into his role as head coach while jug­gling the respon­si­bil­i­ties of fam­ily, faith and coach­ing. He and his wife Justina reside in Welling­ton with their four-month old son Callen.

Posted by Terra Carlson on Nov 23 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.