South Sioux City, NE – Molly Hornbeck, formerly Molly Frank when she played for the Cardinals back in 2001-2005, is undoubtedly excited for her first season as head coach for the Lady Cardinals.
As coach, she wants to make the high school basketball experience a positive one for all the girls. “I want them to be able to look back at high school basketball and have good memories, and know that they worked as hard as they could and not have any regrets about how they played or their time here,” says Hornbeck.
Hornbeck has a great group of hard-working, energetic girls that she’s excited to watch compete. With only two seniors remaining on the team, a challenge the team faces is having a lot of young girls who haven’t gotten a lot of varsity playing time before, but will have a lot expected out of them in order to help the team out.
“We’re going to be playing bigger schools, we’re going to be playing Class A schools and those girls are quick, so I think that’s going to be our biggest challenge,” says senior Tori Hartnett. She also says that the Lady Cards are also a quick team, and they work hard and condition every day, so they just keep pushing themselves to be the best they can be.
Fellow senior Maddy Voss agrees that the Lady Cardinals are a very upbeat and fast paced team. “Sometimes we do need to just slow it down, concentrate and work on getting good passes,” she says.
Obviously, the main goal of both seniors and Hornbeck is to return to state and have some success there. Smaller goals include improving competitiveness and basic skill during practice and during games.
The Lady Cards had their home opener December 11th against Sioux City North and pulled away with a 53-48 victory over the Stars.
So far, the season is going well, with a 3-0 record. There are no more home games until after the New Year, but in 2015 there will be plenty of opportunities to catch the Lady Cardinals in action at the Mini Dome.
The next home game is at 7:30 on January 3rd, 2015 against Bellevue East.
