Tulpehocken girls’ basketball team looking to turn things around

Winning has been a struggle for the Tulpehocken High School girls’ basketball team. They have won just two Berks League games in each of the last four season, and just one league win five seasons ago.

This year they hope to start the upward climb. The Lady Trojans lost just one senior from last year’s team, but they will still be a relatively young team. The key will be how much the returning players have improved in the off-season.

“We’re looking forward to the season,” said Head Coach Bill Moyer. The new alignments should make for more competitive games.”

He’s talking about the new division alignments in the Berks League for the 2012-13 season. The league is changing from a four division league to a three division league. The top two teams in each division will make the playoffs, as will two wild card teams.

The change will help the Lady Trojans. Last year they were in Division 3 along with Brandywine Heights, Hamburg, Schuylkill Valley and Oley Valley.

This year they will still be in Division 3, and still have Oley Valley and Brandywine Heights in the same division. But there will also be three other smaller schools in the division - Kutztown, Wyomissing and Antietam. Those are teams they should be able to compete against and maybe rack up an few more wins in the division.

“We would like to be competitive every time we take the floor, no matter who we are playing,” said Coach Moyer when asked about the goals for the team. Right now, winning a division title or making the playoffs is not what this team is thinking about. They’re taking it one step at a time, trying to play with any team they’re up against, and maybe winning some more league games.

They will have to do it without last year’s leading scorer, Morgan Hess, who graduated in 2012. She scored 188 points for the Trojans, an average of 8.6 points a game.

Trying to help make up for that loss will be a trio of juniors - Brooke Boyer, Jamie Fisher and Hannah Zerbe.

Boyer will be the point guard for the Trojans. She is coming off a season in which she was second on the team in scoring with 145 total points. She averaged 6.6 points a game.

Fisher had 74 points last year (3.4 points per game average), but led the team in free throw percentage at 70.27% (26-for-37).

Zerbe scored 57 points last year, averaging 3.1 points per game.

The defense is definitely the strength of this team. They kept the opponents to relatively low scores last year, but the offense just couldn’t produce the scoring it needed.

It’s the offense that needs to step up this year if the Trojans are going to turn things around. They have some experienced players back who are certainly capable of scoring points. The question is - will it happen?

“We’ve got to stay healthy and continue to improve,” said Coach Moyer. Like we said before, it’s just baby steps this year. The goal is to win more than a couple of league games and stay competitive. That is a very realistic goal for this team.