Friday, March 29, 2024

Entiat Lady Tigers Basketball: Jump in with a win

An interview with Head Coach Laurie Pipkin

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ENTIAT – The Lady Tigers blew through their season opener against Mansfield/Waterville Shockers, Friday, Dec. 1, defeating the Shockers with a final score of 57-36. After ending last year’s season with an overall record of 16-4, Entiat is on their way to a repeat record.
Head Coach Laurie Pipkin has dedicated over 12 years to coaching the Entiat girls team and is now in her fourth year as varsity head coach, despite residing in Cashmere, “I started coaching over and just haven’t stopped,” she joked, “I love it.”
The Lady Tigers didn’t lose any players to graduation last year, but there were a couple that did not turn out this year explained Pipkin. Two noteworthy returners, however, are Natalya Paz at point guard and Faith Southard at shooting guard. “Natalya runs everything, she keeps us all focused with what we need to do, and she loves the game,” explained Pipkin “she’s always in the gym after practice, on the weekends, doing whatever she can to get better. She always has this sense of where to be and what to do and gets everybody else to do the same thing. Faith is kind of the same thing, but we can really look to her to get some of our outside shots going and play really high-pressured defense”
This year, watch for Mika Sanford and Gemma Delgado suggests Pipkin. While both were JV/V split last year, the two have worked hard and are ready to shine, “(they) were in the gym during the summer and have improved so much,” said Pipkin, “and I think that they’ll be big factors to our team that people wouldn’t have noticed from last year’s team.”
“We have a lot of expectations this year … they’re all pretty consistent and are all a solid group. We’re excited that we get to play some games against teams that we don’t normally get to play,” Pipkin stated, “we get to go down to Colton and play a couple games down there during Christmas break, and Colton’s a team that has had something around 8 out of the last 9 girls’ state championships,” she added, “so we’ll be able to get some good competition – we want to be able to get those games in and be able to get us prepared.”
Pipkin concluded by explain a key attribute of the team, “they (the team) get along really great, and they communicate better than other teams have in the past, and that really helps out on defense, knowing where to be and how to help each other out … being a team is one of our better strengths”

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