The Bow Valley Bobcats JV girls team played their first home game December 14, against the Chestermere Lakers.

Head Coach Kris Nielsen said that taking on a top rated team early in the season presents a unique learning opportunity for the young squad.

"What our goal is for tonight here is to compete. We want the girls to be able to take forty minutes and to compete. I think the score is gonna be secondary probably in this game because we do play a very, very strong opponent in Chestermere, but if we can learn to compete over the course of this year, that's one of our main objectives."

Nielsen coached basketball at Cochrane High School for a number of years; this is his first year coaching for the Bobcats, and his first squad is equally green.

"It's not necessarily young, but it'll be new to the school. We only brought back three girls from the previous team, and we only brought up one from our only middle school program. As far as what's in our program, we don't bring a lot of girls forward from previous years, which is a challenge because then everything's new."

With Bow Valley unable to grab a win from boys or girls teams in five Rocky View games so far this season, Nielsen said he doesn't feel pressure. Rather, he looks at this season as an opportunity to invest in the future of basketball at Bow Valley.

"I think the JV girls are hardly the flagship team of the school but the school itself is not really known as a basketball school, and we'd like to change that."

 

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