The Kennett Indians varsity girls basketball squad enters its 2021-22 campaign in search of new offensive weapons after graduating its top scorer off of last season’s team that finished 14-12.

“We return six girls that played some on varsity last season,” Kennett coach Aaron New said. “But we are losing a lot of scoring off of last season’s squad. That’s going to be the thing with this team. We are going to have to replace our leading scorer and our biggest issue will be trying to find a way to come up with points this season.”

Kennett does have the luxury of returning six upperclassmen who received playing time last season. The returning contributors are senior Anelle Harris, senior Malea Lack, senior Macy New, junior Taleigh Harrell, junior Lani Heeb, and junior Sophie Boone.

“Taleigh Harrell scored the most points last season of any returning player we have,” New said. “She averaged about 12 points a game for us so we will be looking for her to do things for us on offense.

New continued: “Macy New will be a guard-type forward for us. Anelle Harris is another one that has been playing for us since her sophomore season that has quite a bit of varsity experience. Malea Lack came off the bench for us last season on the varsity and also played a little bit on the junior varsity last season.

“Lani Heeb will probably run the point for us,” New

continued. “Sophie Boone, who played quit a bit for us on junior varsity last season, should also be able to help us out on varsity this season.”

Sophomores Tania Parnell, Jayla Moore, and Christi Tejeda are three other candidates to eat up varsity minutes

“They are also in the mix for varsity playing time right now,” New said.

New is hopeful his squad can utilize its speed to compensate for its lack of size.

"We are not very big,” New said. “All of our girls are about the same size at five-five or five-six across the board so we are going to have to make some stuff happen by pressing a little bit. But we do have some athleticism. We have three girls on our team that were third in the 4 x 200 relay last spring.”

Because Kennett is likely to have to force the issue and play fast conditioning has been a focal point in preseason practices.

“We’ve been trying to get in shape,” New said. “We are going to have to press and try to score in transition so we have to get in shape. I probably don’t have them as prepared as I should because I’m still trying to figure out how we can score points. We will see what works for us and who has improved the most offensively once we get going in games and go from there.”

Kennett opens its season at the SEMO Conference Tournament at Dexter. No. 9 seeded Kennett will take on No. 8 seeded Saxony Lutheran in the first round of the nine-team tournament Nov. 29 at 5 p.m.

“It’s always a tough test when you are in a SEMO Conference Tournament,” New said. “But it will give us a chance to play up and down so we can see where we are at and who we are. We need to find out where we are headed offensively and what our best defense is to throw at teams. We just need to get games in early in the year and getting started in the SEMO Conference should be fun.”