Eastern Iowa is stacked with girls' basketball sophomore stars

DES MOINES — As Chloe Rice approached her first season as a varsity basketball player, her father gave her a motto that injected her with confidence.

'He told me last year, 'The ball doesn't care how old you are,'' said Rice, now a sophomore at Marion High School.

Despite an uncommonly youthful lineup — the starting five consists of three sophomores and two freshmen — Marion has advanced to the girls' state tournament. The Indians will face two-time defending champion Harlan in a Class 4A quarterfinal Wednesday.

They're not scared.

'Everybody talks about this team being young, but our goals are really high,' Marion Coach Corby Laube said. 'We're not talking about later. We're talking about now. Our goal is to win it, and we've got the players to do it.'

Marion is one of numerous area qualifiers to be touched heavily by the Class of 2018.

* Last year's 1A runner-up, Springville starts four sophomores, led by likely all-staters Mikayla Nachazel and Rylee Menster, who average more than 28 points per game between them.

* Center Point-Urbana, the second-ranked team in 3A, starts three sophs (Allison Wooldridge, Olivia Brecht and LaMia Sisk), and several others contribute as reserves.

* Kamryn Finley and Megan Murphy combined for 40 points in Linn-Mar's regional-final win over West Des Moines Dowling. Murphy hit seven 3-pointers.

* Lansing Kee's top two scorers are sophs — Ashley Schwartzhoff and Kendra Cooper.

* Most other area qualifiers have at least one high-caliber sophomore. Mary Crompton of Iowa City Regina and Tatum Koenig of West Branch are potential Division-I players down the road. Addison Rath leads Mid-Prairie in scoring. Emily Busta is a double-figure scorer for undefeated Turkey Valley, the top-ranked team in 1A.

The common thread at Marion, CPU and Springville is that their sophomore classes started young, around fourth grade, and stuck together.

'The Menster family (Jeff and Robin) deserve a lot of credit. They reached out to all the kids in that grade and got them involved,' Orioles Coach Nate Sanderson said. 'It's pretty rare for a school our size to have a class like this. We've got a good combination of athleticism and height.'

At all three of those schools, opportunity allowed them to contribute immediately.

'In our situation, when the girls came in as freshmen, there were very few upperclassmen,' said CPU Coach Philip Klett. 'This class came in with a high basketball IQ. One thing I've pushed, no kid gets stuck on the perimeter or in the post. They can all go inside and outside — not just the sophomores, but all of our kids.'

Before he was the high-school girls' coach at Marion, Laube constructed a strong youth AAU team, the Titans. The nucleus of the current Marion sophomore class (Rice, daughter Mia Laube and Caitlyn Smith) was on that team, as well as Murphy and Ally Johnson of Linn-Mar. The team has been reconstructed as the Minnesota Fury, which also includes Nachazel and Menster.

Meanwhile, Finley and Wooldridge play for the Iowa Barnstormers. So Finley and Murphy are summer foes and winter teammates.

'I love playing against Murph, but I really love playing on the same team with her,' Finley said. 'There are no friends when you're on the court against each other. We get after it. But I know during high-school season, she has my back, And I'm always going to be looking for her when she's open.'

Despite their relative youth, the local sophomores are bubbling with confidence as the tournament approaches.

'I think we have a really, really good chance,' Wooldridge said. 'If we play like we can, we have a really good chance.'

Said Rice, whose team has won 12 straight games: 'I think we're playing our best basketball. We want to keep things rolling.'

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