The Blue Valley North girls basketball team graduated six seniors in the 2024-2025 season. This group contained no small amount of talent: one senior got a full-ride scholarship to the University of Kansas, and another went on to play for Harvard University. Senior Tatum Schroering believes the varsity team learned a lot just by watching the graduating seniors.

“For all of us that played on varsity, or rode the bench on varsity, they were just really good role models and being able to watch them, and the values that they show and the skills that they have, like being able to watch and learn from that helped us to learn those things,” Schroering said.

Sophomore Stella Breitenstein believes that size is going to be the hardest strength to replace, as the senior class had multiple players above six feet tall. Schroering believes that the leadership skills are going to be the hardest to replace with the team having a third of the seniors that they did last year. 

“There were six [seniors] last year, and so they kind of had it spread evenly among them about what leadership roles each of them took on during games, during practice and off the court,” Schroering said.

There are some benefits to having a younger team. Schroering and Breitenstein both agree that the coaches are creating a strong foundation for future years with this young team creating years of leadership, and learning to play with the team they’ll play with for the rest of their high school careers. 

“We’re building a foundation and learning to play with each other well enough that it’ll carry into the next few years and help us have more success,” Schroering said. 

Younger players are stepping into larger leadership roles due to the lack of upperclassmen. Evie Kincaid and Caroline Woods were both freshmen on varsity last year and didn’t get much playing time but this year they are playing for the majority of the time, along with freshman Harper Winter. 

“The younger players have to adjust a lot because they know that they’re not going to be the same player this year as the seniors might have been last year, but I think that it’s going into that and making sure that they’re preparing so they can eventually become that player,” Breitenstein said.

With the lack of upperclassmen, it requires some players to play for multiple teams. Breitenstein plays for both JV and Varsity this season.

“There’s not as many people in the basketball program this year,” Breitenstein said. “For me, I’m playing both JV and Varsity, but it’s just kind of created a lot more positions that need to be filled and more roles you have to take because there aren’t as many people to fill those spots.”