Vikings Young Team Expecting To Grow
Photos and story by Robert Thomas
The season may have started out with a whole series of injuries but once free of the injury bug the Vikings are expecting a big season - with a younger team.
The Vikings saw a large turnout for their tryouts with 24 players showing up at the initial tryout day.
Although some quit after the first day and painful cuts had to be made the roster was cut down to 13 players. The Vikings ran a 13 man roster due to one player out with a broken leg and expected to join the team after Christmas.
“This year’s edition is very young. We will get scrappy once we’re healthy,” Vikings head coach Brody Wasmann said.
It’s an attitude the Vikings need at this time as they are running a very short eight player bench due to injuries.
“Our focus is just work ethic and continue to work towards improvement?” Wasmann said.
“We have been short since the start. We took 13 kids because we knew the one had the broken leg.”
Practice is a four day affair per week which can be tough given the large number of senior and junior basketball teams needing practice time.
“Strains, sprains, not being active in the off season and coming into trying to go 100 percent from going from 0 percent. They’re learning that lesson,” Wasmann said.
Expectations may not as high as some teams in the Moose Jaw senior boys city league. It is tempered by trying to teach a younger squad the ropes.
“We’re just expecting them to learn. Continue to understand the game at this speed and pace and to work towards something we can take home,” he said.
“It might be tough for us to be city champs but I would like to see us work towards improvement the city final. For provincials I’d like to see us work through the regional round and get to the provincial.”
With only six players at Wednesday afternoon’s practice the team did not scrimmage but instead focused their practice towards fundamentals.
“We’re working them towards getting the rust off I would say but working on implementing systems. It’s hard to run anything if we don’t understand what we’re trying to do on offense or defence.”
About how hard it’s been to achieve results he said “this year it’s going pretty quick. They have a decent amount of basketball IQ. They understand the defensive structures we’ve been looking at. They understand what we want to do on offence.”
“Now it’s just getting them to play it at this pace.”
A full 13 man bench is what the Vikings are hoping for as many players on the healthy eight man roster they have right now run out of gas.
But it’s common at the start of the season.
“If we run out of gas in March then I’ll be worried.”
