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DICKINSON — The Grant County / Mott-Regent team is the newest co-op in the region and are already eyeing bringing the upset to many prominent area teams. Returning Region 7 Coach of the Year, Sara Seidler, expects to have her team in the mix and possibly in contention come season’s end.
Seidler will have something she made good use of last year in fielding a large arsenal of veteran players.
“With the new co-op we get to reload and be a veteran team all over again,” Seidler said. “Not most teams get that… So it's great for us to have eight or 10 girls with varsity playing time and knowing the ropes.”
One half of the new co-op, Grant County, finished fourth in Region 5’s district tournament with a winning overall record of 13-11, which will only further the success chances of the newly combined team as the other half in Mott-Regent was the dark horse of Region 7 — finishing fifth in the regular season standings with a 19-6 record and making a run to the region tourney finals. They would lose by a single point to the Beulah Miners.
Losing four seniors, including their All-Region player in Madison Rafferty, the Wildfire would have had just one senior this year. Thanks to the joint forces with Grant County, the team now consists of four experienced seniors in Jenessa Zentner, Merissa Meyer, Zoey Heid and Anna Schatz.
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Zentner, the lone Mott-Regent senior, begins the new season with a pedigree and high prestige. The stand-out secured 90 steals last season and would finish in 10th place in the state. In addition to her roguish thievery, Zentner is also a potential double double threat as she averaged 9.4 points and five rebounds per game, to go along with her 50 assists.
Schatz was Grant County’s All-Region selection in Region 5, finishing the season with 10 PPG, 60 steals and 45 assists. Paired with Zentner, Grant County / Mott-Regent might be a sleeper pick to go all the way.
Heid will boost the Zentner/Schatz duo, boasting all around capabilities by averaging just over 9 points per game to her 19 treys. She will assist her team on defense as well as her 64 steals, 63 assists and 3.5 rebounds mark her as a defensive contender.
Meyer will play the utility role on the team by demanding coverage anytime she is beyond the arc as she landed 28 three-pointers last season.
While the core seniors will do much of the heavy lifting in the form of play-time and leadership, the depth of the varsity roster extends beyond the final year players. Juniors Jazlyn Ottmar, Ameerah Rosin and Madison Zimmerman, with sophomore Samantha Greff are all poised for breakout seasons and could quickly find their names on every opponents’ lips.
Ottmar and Zimmerman are defensively sound and aggressively minded players, with Ottmar collecting nearly 30 steals last season with 28, while Zimmerman reached the big 3-0.
“I expect the girls to be very competitive,” Seilder said. “We can be deep on our bench and I think we will be atop the region if we just come together and compete.”
