Wynot girls finish in fourth place

LINCOLN — The Wynot girls entered the 2020-21 season with a target on their back and a lot of work in front of them.

The two-time defending champs were tested by a pandemic and by having to completely reboot their starting lineup.

The COVID-19 threat relegated this new lineup to limited offseason workouts, thus denying the group even more chances to fine tune their ability to come together as a new season beckoned.

Despite all this, Wynot was once again a title threat.

The dream ended, though, when Falls City Sacred Heart used a big run over the final 10 minutes to beat Wynot, 41-27, in the Class D2 semifinals.

Regardless, Wynot (20-8) was led by a group of young ladies that overcame a lot just to put the program at the precipice in Lincoln.

Head coach Steve Wieseler said that the team’s struggles with offense and shooting throughout parts of the season came back to bite the girls in the end after a 49-39 quarterfinal win over No. 3 seed CWC.

“We beat a really good CWC team, but then we just offensively, we didn’t play well the next two days,” Wieseler said. “We couldn’t shoot the ball well; couldn’t hit free throws and we couldn’t score. They played hard; it just didn’t work out well I guess.”

Wieseler said the lost summer affected the team’s offensive potential, but he was proud of how this team figured things out well enough to be a team comparable to many others that made state runs.

Junior Karley Heimes holds a lot of optimism going forward, but her heart breaks for not sending the seniors off on the backs of three-straight titles.

“We’ll get another year to get another championship under our belt, but we lose the seniors and their leadership,” Heimes said. “I wish we could have gone farther, but Falls City deserved it. We have to come back and play our hardest and do it again. I know the seniors really wanted and deserved it. They worked hard. It would have been nice to get another one under our belt, but it doesn’t always work out that way.”

Heimes agreed with Wieseler about how time missed in the offseason may have hurt this team’s ability to mesh as an offense.

“We rely on the summer to rebuild and get used to each other,” she said. “It really affected us. We peaked later in the season at the conference tournament as we learned to work together and our roles on the team. We eventually got it. We won some games along the way and it helped us in the long run.”

Sure, the lack of offseason shots can hurt, but these girls needed time playing together, especially as several new starters needed to take control of the Wynot engine.

“The six seniors we lost had played together for a long time and could read each other and they knew where someone was going to go and whether they could pass or shoot it,” Heimes said. “We had to get a whole new starter group for us. We had to learn to work together and where people would be to gel together and that’s what we lost out on this summer.”

Wieseler said that it’s back to work in the offseason while track gets going. The hope is to have some voluntary workouts with players to improve shooting and offensive skills.

“We kind of let them decide if they want extra work,” he said. “Then we hit the summer pretty hard in June with open gyms, games and camps and hope we have things figured out.”

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