New faces at helm of hoops squads

Lucas Punkari

Although they’ve had years of experience coaching girls’ basketball squads locally, this year’s NorWOSSA campaign will be a new challenge for both Marla Knutsen and Dan Bird.
This season will see Knutsen in charge of the Muskie junior squad after spending the last five years coaching the senior squad with her dad, Ian Simpson.
Meanwhile, Bird and his colleague, Mike Krueger, will be moving up from the junior ranks to coach the senior squad to replace the recently-retired Simpson.
“This is something I am really excited about doing,” enthused Knutsen, who previously was involved in the junior program as a coach seven seasons ago.
“I can shape the team exactly the way I want it to so I’m really looking forward to doing that,” she smiled.
“When Mr. Simpson retired, Marla felt that she was more comfortable being in charge of the junior squad, and Mike and I were both comfortable in taking charge of the senior squad,” noted Bird.
For this year’s senior squad, 15 players were trying out for the 12 roster spots over the last week of practice, with the final roster set to be decided following last Thursday’s practice.
“Of the 12 guys that we will have on our roster, we have four members coming back from last year’s team [that lost in the NorWOSSA final to Dryden] and we have eight newcomers that we are very comfortable with,” said Bird.
Part of the reason why the squad was chosen early this year was so the team can prepare for a tournament in Thunder Bay next weekend prior to the start of the NorWOSSA season Sept. 22 in Dryden.
“We’re going to try and get a real basic offence in place over the next week that we will work on, along with a pretty basic defence,” Bird explained.
“Our goal is to obviously win NorWOSSA this year, and this will give us a chance to not only size up Kenora and Dryden, but this will also give us a chance to see what two teams we might have to match up with from Thunder Bay for later this year,” he added.
As for the junior squad, 25 players tried out for the 15-player roster, which was set to be finalized following today’s practice.
“Everyone’s been playing really well in practice and it’s going to be difficult to make the cuts we want to make to get the squad down to 15 players,” Knutsen admitted.
“There is so much potential out there with these players, and they all have such enthusiasm that you can see when they are practising,” she added.
While the Muskie junior squad has won the last two NorWOSSA crowns, Knutsen remains unsure where exactly her squad will fit into this year’s standings once the campaign gets underway Sept. 22 in Dryden.
“It’s too early to tell, I think, just because we haven’t made the team yet and we don’t quite know what our strengths and weaknesses that we have to work on,” she reasoned.
“In junior basketball, it’s really all about making sure the girls get a feel for the game and also learn the right way to play the game,” she noted.