Serving Lucas, Ottawa, Sandusky and Wood Counties
The Oak Harbor girls basketball team returns a pair of all-conference guards in Brookelynn Tabbert and Karder Haas with the hope of capturing a third consecutive NBC championship.
The Rockets, which finished 16-6 last year while splitting the league’s crown with Genoa, are tabbed by the NBC’s coaches to finish just ahead of the Comets this season.
“We expect to be competitive, number one,” head coach Dick Heller said. “I know the coaches in our meeting picked us first, but I don't feel like we're necessarily the best team. Genoa has a great team with a lot of kids back. Lake’s got a good team. Eastwood's got a good team. There's a lot of good teams in the NBC. It's sort of a nice honor to be selected first, but there's a lot of really good teams.
“We just want to be able to do our best, and it would be great if we could get another league championship, but there's no guarantees on that.”
Tabbert is back after earning First Team All-NBC and Special Mention All-Ohio recognition last year. She produced 14.5 points, 5.9 rebounds, 4.1 steals, and 2.4 assists per game. Meanwhile, Haas was tabbed Second Team All-NBC after averaging 12.3 points, 2.8 rebounds, two steals, and one assist per contest.
The Rockets also added another guard to their roster in Toledo Christian transfer, Reghan Markley.
“I think anytime you have somebody new coming into the system, there's a little bit of an adjustment that everybody has to make,” Heller said. “From what we've seen in our scrimmages, I think we are taking the steps in the right direction of her stepping in and being accepted by the other kids on the team.”
Haylee Robinson, a junior who averaged three points, 3.1 rebounds, and one steal, and Kaitlyn Meloche, a senior wing who averaged 1.7 points and two rebounds, are also back along with three-year letterwinner Laney Schmidt.
“Haylee will probably be one of our post players,” Heller said. “She got some time last year as a sophomore and gained some good experience. (Sophomore) Kendall Gaines is another one that will step in and give us a lot of good quality time. We've got some seniors who got to play a little bit last year that we hope will step it up.”
Overall, the Rockets return three starters as well as six letterwinners overall.
“I always struggle talking too much about individuals, mainly because we want to really focus on team effort,” Heller said. “That's one of our main focuses, to be a team and share the ball. Whoever is hot, that's who you go to. You hit the open person and just focus on being a good, strong team. That goes back to the chemistry, the kids buying into it, and playing that way.”
While Oak Harbor has strong guard play, they aren’t very tall, and Heller said defense will be the team’s focus.
“We have to play really good defense,” he said. “We're not exceptionally tall, so we have to be scrappy. We have to do a good job rebounding, both offensively and defensively, and we have to come out and play smart and consistent, and our team chemistry has to be hitting on all cylinders. The chemistry is always the ingredient that helps you get through the tough games.”
With an experienced team, Heller is also looking for his team to have better shot selection this season.
“We’ve always struggled scoring a lot of points,” he said. “We take enough shots, but they don't always fall. We want to try to improve on our scoring percentage and do a little better job of knocking down some shots that we have missed over the last two years.”
Heller said this is the most experienced group he’s had since returning to Oak Harbor two seasons ago after an initial stint from 2001-02 through 2008-09, where he compiled a pair of undefeated regular seasons.
