The Cordova lady Wolverines have been hard at work preparing for the 2025 basketball season. A solid mix of young players plus returning veterans take to the court at home on Jan. 10-11, as they begin conference play against Tok.
This year’s squad includes three seniors, three juniors, five sophomores, and four freshmen for a total of 15 girls on the team. They will be coached by Brooks Fry, and assisted by JV Coach Ema Babic.
“Most of the players attended team camp at the University of Alaska Anchorage this summer and participated in a voluntary shooting program locally,” Fry said. “Open gym sessions all summer were well attended and as a team we shot over 63,000 shots.”
There were four girls who “spent enough hoop time” to make it onto the 10,000 shot plaque in the gym as well, she said. Those were freshman Elizabeth Baenen, sophomore Bella Hidalgo, junior Sadie Fry, and senior Yag Mejias.
On the team’s strategy this year, Fry said it’ll be a combination of speed, vision, and strong defense.
“We will be using fast-paced transition with a motion offensive system to take advantage of our speed, fitness and deep bench,” she said. “We have been working quite a bit on using good court vision to read and react to the defense while creating scoring opportunities with fundamentally sound passing and shooting. You can expect to see us putting defensive pressure on our opposition in all four corners of the gym.”
But above all, Fry said, “we intend to enjoy playing good, fun basketball with only the highest levels of sportsmanship and respect.”
Coach also noted that conference reorganizing is giving the girls a different schedule this year.
“Conference realignment took a couple of teams from our conference, but some familiar strong rivals remain so we will be working to come out on top of the heap and hopefully earn a trip to the state tournament,” she said.
Teams in the conference this year are Cordova, Glennallen, Tok, Effie Kokrine and Nenana. The top two teams from conference will advance to the eight-team state playoff.
The Cordova girls have three sets of home games on the schedule: Tok on Jan. 10-11, the Cordova Tipoff Tournament on Jan. 16-18, and the conference tournament on March 6-8. The lady Wolverines will also be traveling to play in three Anchorage tournaments, and will compete in games in Fairbanks and Nenana.
