The Panther’s girls’ basketball team went 10-19 last season, with a 9-11 mark in conference and a 6th place finish overall.

Nine players are returning since last year and come August 7, those nine will be getting ready for the upcoming season in another hemisphere.

Rome, Venice, and Florence will be the destinations, in which the girls will compete in four or five games in 11 days and practices will begin around July 25 in preparation for the trip.

“It will be a great way to start the season off, get in shape,” said Megan Sparks, a new addition to the Eastern coaching staff.

“I’m really excited to see what the competition will be like outside this country,” said sophomore Meagan Edwards.

As far as the season is concerned, head coach Brady Sallee believes the youth of this team is the most exciting part.

Although there are nine returning players, there are six sophomores and five freshmen on this year’s squad.

“Overall, I think we’re a little immature, a little inexperienced,” said Sparks. “We have a lot of freshmen and sophomores, but I would also consider them veterans because now they know the competition, and a lot of them have been playing with each other for at least a year.”

Sallee has said one of the problems of last year was all the new

kids coming in, and having to put into more of time management with those players.

“Now we got it from the standpoint from now you know what OVC travel is about, what college practice is about, and it won’t be that stress of last year of time management,” Sallee said.

Although last year’s season seemed somewhat of a disappointment, Sallee points out it was a season of firsts for his club, such as beating Southeast Missouri State, who ended up winning the champion-ship.

One of the most important firsts to this year’s team is the addition of Sparks as assistant coach. Sparks, who just finished helping run a girls’ basketball camp with Sallee and the nine returning players, has said her role as a coach is “definitely sinking in.”

“She went out and ran it [the camp]; she had it well organized. I was extremely pleased; it was her first big test as a coach,” Sallee said.

Unlike last year, where Edwards said physically and emotionally the team wasn’t there when it needed to be, Sparks’ plan for this year is working hard on team play.

“It’s a lot harder to stop a team than with just one player,

so we’re trying to challenge the sophomores; it should be a challenge,” Sparks said.

So how will the girls finish this season? Well Sparks’ main goal is to win conference, and while that’s probably Sallee’s as well, he has a different way of looking at things.

“Success for us, I never really define it as wins/losses, but to walk away from the games feeling good about what they just saw, and the wins will take care of themselves,” he said.