ABOVE: North Union High School Girl’s Varsity team. Front Row (l-r) Ava Steinberger and Hannah Nielsen. Middle row (l-r): Alexis Cummins, Shallie Walders, Alyssa Welbig, Ainsley Ulrich, Maisey Bierstedt and Avery Walstead; Back Row (l-r): Danika Morphew, Marissa Nielsen, Ally Bruhn, Samantha Hoye and Taylor Parsons. Submitted Photo Courtesy of Kim Meyer, Editor, Bancroft Register

ARMSTRONG, IA – Hosting a young roster after graduating three seniors and currently fielding only two returning starters and a bench player, the Warriors are looking to find their footing early and gain the experience needed to be successful in conference play.

“We have our sophomore class, which is a nice group of girls,” said North Union girls basketball head coach Merle Tigges. “Most of them are playing and some of the freshmen, they really aren’t playing but they’re gonna have to get up to speed so they can at least be ready to play or play next year for sure. But we’re a young group, and you know, I think I’ve told the girls, ‘No more talking about how young we are.’ We just need to get experience and get up to speed.”

Facing a strong conference, the Warriors are going to need to find a balance early and take every minute on the court to heart as they gain experience at the varsity level.

“[We need to] get better every week,” said Tigges. “We’ve got to make strides. Our conference is pretty solid, and our non-conference schedule, we have Estherville, they’re in the top two or three … We just play some really good teams”

With such an inexperienced roster, Tigges said it is going to be up to the team and how hard they push themselves to get the results they are after.

“It’s going to be night in and night out. We’re going to be tested,” said Tigges. “We don’t really get a lot of nights off really. So if we don’t come to play, we’re going to probably come in the short end for sure, and if we come to play, hopefully we’ll get some of these better teams a challenge for sure and maybe knock some of them off.”

The Warriors do have a handful of veterans that they are relying on to get things going and will be key game to game as the season goes on.

“Ainsley Ulrich. She started last year,” said Tigges. “She did a good job scoring, and her other sophomore guard was Shallie Walders. She came off the bench as a guard. She played a lot too. Those two are our main ball handlers. We have a couple of senior posts, one Ava Steinberger started, and we have another post senior post Hannah Nielsen again. They have to get rebounds and control the boards and, you know, just do a good job underneath the basket.”

The Warriors’ (0-2) next game is against North Iowa on Friday at 6:15 p.m. in the North Iowa Community High School Gym.