Lady Cats get summer work started

Louisburg High School girls basketball coach Shawn Lowry speaks to his team Friday at the conclusion of their week-long team camp. Lowry hopes this summer will help build leadership and team chemistry.

The season may be more than six months away, but the Louisburg High School girls basketball team is already preparing for what lies ahead.

Just two weeks after school was let out, the Lady Cats hit the hardwood for a week-long team camp last week in an effort to get better fundamentally and get their competition level back up to where it needs to be.

The Lady Cats were ready to get back to work and will try and replace three senior starters from a season ago. Louisburg had to say goodbye to all-Frontier League players Natalie Moore and Kirstin Lowry, along with the team’s best post player in Kallie O’Keefe.

Although they will have to make up for the production of those three players, Louisburg coach Shawn Lowry believes his team has gotten off to a good start.

“It has been a good week,” Lowry said. “We have had some good leadership. We lost some really good leadership last year and that was one of the things those three seniors that we lost left behind. They showed these guys how to be leaders.”

Senior Megan Lemke returns as one of the team leaders, along with juniors Madisen Simpson, Paige Buffington and Emalee Overbay. All four players saw significant varsity time last season and coach Lowry also had a new addition to the camp in senior Megan Roy, who also provided leadership.

It was those players who helped the incoming freshmen and underclassmen understand what their coach is looking for.

Savannah Reinhart tries to dribble past Megan Roy during the final day of the team camp Friday at Louisburg High School.

“Team camp week is really about an indoctrination of culture and mentality,” Lowry said. “That is what is most important. It is important to learn how to compete hard every day, especially for the younger kids and the older kids setting that example and shaping our team identity. That is the main thing we want to accomplish.

“This week also gives me a chance to see which kids have done some work before the summer and which ones haven’t. There have been quite a few kids that have done some work and that is really great to see coming in to start.”

Lowry likes what he has seen out of his returning players so far, but he has also been impressed with the nine freshmen that took part in the team camp.

“There are some kids that fit in pretty well,” he said. “There are some, that if they put in more work in the offseason, who knows where they can be at the start of the season. They are learning that the speed of this game is way different than where they have been. What I do like is they haven’t backed down when going up against some of these older kids and that is nice to see.”

Along with the team camp, the Lady Cats will have a busy summer. They have a weights session twice a week and also have open gym workouts two days a week.

The varsity players will also compete in tournaments throughout the summer at Piper in Kansas City, along with stops in Girard and Emporia. The younger players will participate in a league throughout the summer that will be held at Baker University in Baldwin City.

“When you have to work hard together, it brings you together,” Lowry said. “We don’t want to win games this summer necessarily, we want to prepare to win games this summer for when it counts.”