The Eaton Rapids High School Varsity Girls Basketball team has been doing extremely well this season. Their record is 15-3 so far this season, and they are hungry for many more. They are a very young team with only three seniors and one junior, with the rest of the team consisting of sophomores.
Under Coach Willis Whitmyer, the girls have won one a league championship, three district championships, and have gone as far as the regional finals. The leading scorer on the team is Allie Dittmer, who happens to also be the team’s leading rebounder. She is also the second leading scorer in the league, only behind one other girl from Waverly.
The girls only losses have been to teams ranked in the Class A division. They are second in their league, and continue to grow as a team. Whitmyer does not believe having a young team is a disadvantage in any way. Even though the team is young, it doesn’t stop the girls from scaring the other schools and coming out with wins.
Coach Whitmyer believes the key to the girls’ success this year has been, "reducing the amount of turnovers from last year, staying healthy, and the amount of commitment out of the girls, especially in the off-season."
He believes that the team, "works well together most games, and they definitely work better together than the girls did last year. We still have a long way to go, but they all work toward our common goal, and that is to win."
Whitmyer remembers one moment in Williamston as the funniest so far this season. "We were in the middle of a game in the huddle, and Allie Dittmer wasn’t paying attention, so I asked her to repeat back what I just said. She tried to ad-lib and was way off, so I just replied with a bunch of jibberish which made everyone laugh.’"
The coach loves that his team is so unselfish and that their best player is one of the humblest in the area. He’s glad that everyone cares about winning and getting better as a team, rather than individual glory.
He is definitely sad to lose his seniors, as he says, "It’s like losing a daughter." He is very hopeful that at least two of his current seniors will be playing college ball and that many more in the years to come will too.
Coach Whitmyer greatly believes in the quote by Henry Ward Beecher that you have to, "Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself."
Good luck to our girls in the rest of their season and go cheer them on at the next basketball game!
