The De Soto High School girls’ basketball team recently moved to 11-3 after defeating Turner High School at home, capturing a win of 80-16 at home on Feb. 11. This win adds to their undefeated conference record, as they are currently 4-0 in the United Kansas Conference. Senior starter Mackenzie Shupe also reached one thousand total points in her career during the game. 

For head coach Ryan Robie, their success can be contributed to the leadership found on the court in the seniors. 

“First and foremost, we’re led by a great group of seniors. We have six seniors in our program right now that have really established what our program is and what it’s all about,” Robie said. “They’re great basketball players but even better leaders and kids.” 

Robie also feels that their consistent level of playing has been a factor in their high-achieving season. 

“We’ve had a lot of consistency over the last two years and I think that also plays a role. This group of girls have played together a lot so they’ve become very familiar with the things they do well and the things that they struggle with,” Robie said. “We’ve also been healthy and been able to be full-go for all of our games which has been really nice.” 

For senior Lamyah Ricks, who scored the team high of 15 points versus Turner, also feels that the season’s success is related to team chemistry. 

“I think that the biggest factor for our success so far is just how much chemistry we have outside of basketball. The basketball girls are some of my closest friends off the court, which helps a lot working through plays during the season,” Ricks said. 

So far, the Wildcats only have three losses as a part of their record, two being to larger Olathe schools and the other to Eudora High School. For Robie, these losses have been a large part of fine tuning the program. 

“Two of the three losses we were right in the game. We came up just short versus Olathe Northwest, which is a traditional powerhouse in 6A, and in the Olathe North game we learned that not having Lamyah [Ricks] on the floor against teams that pressure us is a struggle,” Robie said. “In the Eudora game, they sped us up and pressured us so it was good for us to see that we need to be able to handle some pressure and since then I feel like we’ve done a lot better job of that.” 

For Ricks, the team’s losses have been a learning curve for them to take and use. 

“We know what we did wrong and what we need to improve based on when we were being pressured, which is a main reason for those losses,” Ricks said. 

The team’s winning record and undefeated conference streak hopes to be continued and eventually lead to a conference title. 

“Winning conference has been our goal from day one, and that’s been something we’ve always been looking to do. We set a tone early against some of the better teams in our league, but we know that coming back, Basehor plays really good basketball so that will be a tough out, and Lansing and Shawnee Heights always give us good games,” Robie said. “So while we’re undefeated, we know that we’re not even halfway through and that there’s some good coaches that will make adjustments, but winning conference is definitely a goal of ours.” 

The girls’ basketball team will go back into action Friday night, Feb. 14 at Seaman High School.