The Douglas High girls' basketball team is at a crossroads.
Simple as that.
When the 2009-10 version of the varsity squad takes the floor in November, it will be the first time since the 2001-02 state runner-up squad that the team will not have at least one player on the roster with at least some link to someone who was a part of a playoff win.
During that stretch, the Tigers have had nine Division I-caliber athletes come through the program, three of whom went on to play basketball at the D-I level, and 14 first-team All-Sierra League honorees.
There's little question next season is going to go a long way toward defining what kind of tradition the Douglas girls' program is going to have in the future.
"We're really going to look to be reinventing ourselves this summer," Douglas coach Werner Christen said. "There's no question we are going to be looking at a lot of different things."
Douglas is in an odd position of having lost seven multi-season starters over the past two years.
What they'll have next year is six returning players, two of whom were starters and two others who saw substantial playing time.
Christen joked about having the youngest group he'd ever coached entering this season.
But after Douglas got off to a 9-6 start against the toughest portion of the schedule, it got a little easier to forget that in reality this was a rebuilding season.
With three weeks left in the regular season, the Tigers were still fighting for the league title. With three games left, the squad still had a shot at a home playoff game.
After suffering a loss to Reno in the first round in the playoffs, it was hard to overlook the fact that half the roster from a solid 2008-09 campaign were going to be back. Of those, four were underclassmen.
"It's great experience," Christen said of games like the Reno playoff game. "When you can throw six youngsters out there, it's invaluable.
"You can't get them experience on the practice floor against a team like Reno. They have 10 players and all 10 can play. There was no let up. I'm glad they kept attacking us through the game because that showed the girls who are going to be back where they'll need to be. I was even more glad that our girls didn't back down."
Still, Douglas is saying goodbye to a strong senior class, most notably four-year starter Jessica Waggoner, who finished averaging 17.0 points per game.
Most likely to step up in her place are junior forward Ne'Jae Jackson (4.6 ppg) or sophomore Bri Burnside, who came on as the year progressed.
Douglas will be facing a rebuilding project in the backcourt for the second year in a row as starters Ally Freitas and Maci Pfaffenberger will both be graduating.
Sophomore Jackie Harper saw some starting time, finishing as the team's leading 3-point shooter with eight, and freshman guard Katie Dry emerged as one of the team's top transition defenders.
The best news is that the school's junior varsity and freshman teams are coming off exceptional seasons. The freshmen went 23-2 overall and 13-1 in league play while the JV team went 17-7 overall and 11-3 in league.
Coupled with the Tigers' young returning core, Douglas could be in for several years of quick and athletic squads. It's not so much that the success is in any danger of going away, it's more that the team is going to look a bit different while attempting to acheive that success.
The downside of all that is that the top programs around the rest of the league (Galena and Manogue) fielded relatively young rosters this seasons, so Douglas will still be looking inexperienced comparitively.
A strong summer season could vault the Tigers right back into the title picture, but only time will tell.
No. 8 Carson 37, No. 7 Douglas 35 at Douglas, Feb. 13. Normally, you want your best game to be a win, but you couldn't top the atmosphere for this one: Packed gym, archrival opponents and crucial playoff seeding at stake. The last minute of play, during which the ball changed hands about five times without any points, was one of the more entertaining stretches of basketball played in Minden in the past several years. Carson's Breanna Anderson scored the game-winning basket off a pass from Brandi Vega with just two seconds left.
No. 10 Douglas 71, No. 3 Manogue 49 at Douglas, Jan. 16. Douglas dominated the eventual Sierra League champions with a stifling defense and opportunistic offense. The Tigers outscored the Miners 20-3 in the second quarter to highlight one of the program's most dominating halves of basketball in years.
South Tahoe 58, No. 10 Douglas 56 at Douglas. Just a night after what would end up being their best win of the year, the Tigers came up with their biggest head-scratcher of the season. Douglas appeared tentative and out-of-rhythm, perhaps due to the emotional let-down from the Manogue win. It didn't help that the Vikings were hitting every shot they put up. In the end, it was one of six games for the Tigers that were decided on the final play. All six were losses.
Douglas had a lot of success with its junior varsity and freshman teams this year, which should give the team a bit of a boost. Manogue and Galena both had exceptionally young varsity rosters this season, so there will still be a logjam at the top regardless of what the Tigers come in with.
Douglas will be replacing an all-league starting point guard for the second-consecutive season and will be without a returning starter at center for the first time in five years.
All that being said, Douglas should return three of its top six scorers and six players overall.
