The Benilde-St. Margaret’s girl’s basketball team is coming off a historic season where they won the State Championship in Class AAA. Despite featuring some newer faces and younger talent, they are optimistic about this year’s team and the aspirations for March.
Last winter, the girls basketball team beat Stewartville 66-60, earning their first state title since 2010. With talent across the Red Knight roster, Senior Michigan commit Olivia Olson stood out as a prominent leader amidst the group. Rather than stressing about repeating success, Olson preaches a positive approach to the high expectations put on the defending state champs. “We have a target on our back and it’ll be fun to prove ourselves again,” Olson said.
There are many returning players from a State Championship-winning team, but with two seniors graduating from the starting lineup, there is still a need for new players to pick up the slack. Head Coach, Tim Ellefson, has a positive outlook about this season, especially with young talent ready to take the next step as varsity players. “Presley Watkins, she’s a freshman, highly qualified to come to our team and participate right away. She’s the second-ranked player in the freshman class in Minnesota. So obviously she’s gonna give us some things,” Ellefson said.
After winning the State championship, there are lessons to be learned on how to control the emotion and excitement of a new season. This season, Ellefson looks to lead the team strategically to get them back to the promised land. “The biggest thing is, you know, teaching the kids what’s valuable and what’s not… but the team concept is playing for each other. It’s something that we really built on last year, and we have definitely a head start going into it this year,” Ellefson said.
The program has changed drastically since COVID-19, with new coaches and new faces across the board. Although there are some returning players on the roster, the biggest change in the program is the change of talent from a few years back and how the culture has changed with the work ethic and being more connected as a team. “I think we obviously have a lot more talent… we’re starting to change the culture and we obviously have a lot of work to do with everyone bonding together and working as one team but I think we are doing a pretty good job so far,” Olson said.
While Ellefson’s coaching style and staff were a big change for the program, the team immediately clicked and adapted to their new environment. Not having tryouts is one of the non-traditional approaches they take as off-season work allows the coaches to thoroughly evaluate each player and put them in positions to succeed, without having an unfair or uneven system of evaluating players. “We don’t have enough kids to cut anybody so it’s a matter of just placing them on the right team. We have a high turnout, with camps and stuff throughout the year so we have a good idea of where everyone belongs. We’re very fluid with positioning so kids can be moved up if they show that they belong at a higher level,” Ellefson said.
After graduating a few players and key leaders, Coach Ellefson and the staff are far from worried about where leadership will come from this season. Returning upperclassmen have been working to motivate the team, and the younger players have confidently stepped into important roles, putting their experience from previous seasons to good use. “We have a lot of experience. So we have kids that have been playing at a high level for a long time, whether it’s here or in their AAU programs, playing against national competition, they have a lot of game experience against good players so we can get that from almost all of our varsity players,” Ellefson said.
This year’s team has continued strong bonding leading to positive engagement and activities outside of the basketball court. The goal of these activities is to increase team chemistry and help local communities. “We’ll be grocery bagging this weekend and we like to volunteer. We have team bonding on Friday nights where we get together at someone’s house as a whole program. Whenever we have stuff we include the ninth-grade team and JV team so it’s nice to get to know other girls,” Olson said.
The team hopes to finish the season off just as strong as last year. The team is feeling confident this time around as they hope to end their season on a high note. “We just have to play together. Everyone knows we have a lot of talent, but playing together and knowing our roles is going to be the most important thing to try and get back to our end goal… of just winning the state championship,” Olson said.