Building and rebuilding

The Encampment Lady Tigers return to the court this year following a third place finish last season at the State Championship. This season the Encampment girls will be playing without Hailey Barkhurst, Cheyanne Jordan, Kayla Wagy and Micaiah Pantle, who all graduated last year. Another unexpected loss, which took place shortly before the school year, was that of Paige Powell when her family moved to Cody.

"Obviously we've got some difficulties," said Clint Bromley, head coach of the Lady Tigers. "Paige (Powell) moving to Cody ... creates a hole for us and we've got to figure out how to fill that up. All the seniors that we lost last year. We lost our guard, so we're going to have to have some guard play we've got to shore up, too."

It is, at this point, unsure how the loss of Powell and last year's seniors will affect how the Lady Tigers play. This year, there are all of seven girls on the team led by seniors Lauren Buford and Noelle Peterson. Last season, Peterson was the lead scorer for Encampment with 492 points throughout the season and averaging nearly 19 points per game.

"We're going to go out and do our best. I expect to us to be, at least, in the middle of the pack somewhere. You get the right day and the right circumstances, you get above that," Bromley said. "Right now, we're just focusing on building a team and getting girls that can work together. With there only being seven of us, they're all going to have to play a lot of basketball."

Despite there only being seven players on the team this year, six of them are returning players with sophomore Lizzie James being the only new addition. Seniors Buford and Peterson will be leading junior Riley Little and sophomores Grace Tieszen, Shiann Finney, Amber Stubbs and James.

This weekend, Encampment will get an idea of how well they can play without Powell as they head into the Carbon County Classic. The Lady Tigers will begin the tournament on Friday when they face off against the Lady Tigers from Hayden, Colo. followed by the St. Stephens Lady Eagles. On Saturday, Encampment will play the Meeteetse Lady Longhorns and the Dubois Lady Rams.

"We're just looking at what can we come out looking like at the Carbon County Classic and we'll build from that and see what we can come up with," said Bromley.

Following the Carbon County Classic, the Lady Tigers will compete in the Dogger Basketball Classic in Lingle and their first game before winter break will be against the Walden Lady Wildcats at 4:30 p.m. on Dec. 20 in Walden, Colo.