Following the graduation of the class of 2025, the girls basketball team has been forced to basically rebound from the ground up. The team lost four seniors along with multiple underclassmen, but this hasn’t stopped the team from having a successful season.
The Jonathan Alder Girls Basketball team has been around for decades, and have multiple final four appearances and a state title to their name. This year’s season marks the 25th anniversary of said title, and the second season under Head Coach Natalie McGrath.
Senior Caroline Timberlake admires Coach McGrath, and is grateful for all of the time she puts into the team.
“I very much enjoy her. I’m close with her on and off the court,” says Timberlake. “So she’s definitely a very passionate coach. She knows she wants to win, but she also loves all of us. So we want to have fun and we are cared about. She’s great.”
So far, the girls are 4-16 overall and 4-5 in the Central Buckeye Conference. They are third in the Kenton Trail division of the conference, sitting only behind London and Urbana. Their wins are against Kenton Ridge, Bellefontaine and Tecumseh. They have won against Tecumseh twice this season.
Sophomore Kennedy McGrath believes that this conference is extremely tough to play due to a variety of reasons.
“A lot of the other teams have been playing with each other for a long time,” says Kennedy McGrath. “And last year … we graduated a lot of seniors who have played together a lot. So we kind of were starting off at like a new spot and still trying to build that team chemistry.”
The team this year has four seniors: #20 Isla Beatty, #3 Alaina Reynolds, #4 Kallie Sajdyk and #2 Timberlake. The typical starting lineup includes sophomore #11 Izzy Griffin, freshman #24 Elliot Hecht, junior #30 Makenna Keene, #12 Kennedy McGrath and either Timberlake or freshman #5 Logan Donaldson.
According to Kennedy McGrath, everyone on this team gets along extremely well. “We’re all really close and most of us are friends outside of the sport too,” she says. Timberlake seconds this.
“We’re all tight knit. We like to be together,” says Timberlake. “We don’t go to practice and be like, well, I have to be with her, yeah, yeah. We all like being around each other.”
On the offensive side, McGrath leads the team in scoring, with an average of 11.2 points per game and a total of 213 points overall. She also leads in assists, with 2.1 assists per game and a total of 39 throughout the season. Griffin has the highest field goal percentage, with 36.7%
Defensively, Griffin leads in rebounds, with an average of 4.6 rebounds per game and a total of 87 throughout the year. She also leads in blocks, with an average of 1.9 per game and 37 total. She is also second in the whole league in this aspect. Finally, Kennedy McGrath leads in steals, with 2.9 per game and a total of 55.
The girls have two games left in the regular season. The match tonight is at home against Bellefontaine, and also senior night for the team. On Saturday, February 7, the girls will face off against the West Liberty-Salem Tigers in an away game.
