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By Mike Flanagan
Hometown Weekly Sports Editor
A 16-3 regular season in 2018-2019 earned the Wellesley High School girls basketball team the No. 2 seed in Division I South last season. The Raiders earned a pair of playoff victories against rival and No. 15 Walpole (56-45) and No. 10 Oliver Ames (46-41) before falling to eventual sectional and state champ Braintree (55-42) in the South semifinals.
This season, the Wellesley girls enter with high expectations despite losing several key pieces to graduation. Leading the Raiders will be a trio of senior captains in point/shooting guard Anna Glashow, forward Allison Goehringer and shooting guard Caroline Harding.
“Some general goals we have for the season are to have a winning record, play a strong technical game and work cohesively as a team,” said Glashow when asked about her team’s expectations and goals. “We want to play the best defense the program has ever seen.”
When it comes to replacing lost talent such as leading scorer Brooke Guiffre, Glashow says she and her teammates realize the task ahead of them and are confident in the group they have to figure things out.
“I don’t think you can truly replace a player like Brooke,” said Glashow. “But I think we can play a different kind of game in order to make up for that kind of loss offensively. This season we’re going to have a huge focus on defense and work to get a lot of our points off of fast breaks and smart plays to the basket. We have a lot of strong athletes on the team and this means we have a lot of speed and a lot of players with good hands and reflexes. This will help us dominate teams defensively. Our coach told us after tryouts even if we only score one basket, if we can keep other teams from scoring any we’ll still win the game, and I think that’s ultimately the attitude we’re going to run with this season in order to replace our amazing offensive players from last year.”
The Wellesley girls will open up their season on December 13 at home against Weymouth.
For funny and incisive sports analysis, follow Mike Flanagan on his personal Twitter and Instagram @flano0.
