The Washington Warrior girls basketball team took runners-up at the Dale tournament last weekend.

They defeated Cushing (100-13) and Kingfisher (47-36) before losing to host Dale in the finals (75-69).

While Warrior coach Kale Simon is optimistic about the season, he says there is still plenty of room for improvement.

Simon is entering his fourth year as the Warriors head coach and Washington is the defending Class 3A champions.

The Warriors graduated two seniors from last season’s team, Breanna Lindert and Shelbie Caveness, who were key contributors during Washington’s run to the title.

“Breanna and Shelbie left two big holes and maybe did more than we realized,” Simon said. “They covered up a lot of inequities that we’re currently working through.”

Three of the players he will look to for help are Laney Gay, Eternity Self and Hadley Beard.

Washington’s four returning seniors are Jayden Wells, Kelby Beller, Preslee Johnson and Gay.

“Our four seniors are great leaders by example,” Simon said. “We’re still trying to find a vocal leader who will help allow us to guard people on defense. Breanna and Shelbie carried more of that than I realized. We’re searching for someone to consistently fill the vocal leadership.”

Sophomores Briley Beller and Harper Johnson will also be in the mix this season, along with freshman Bentli Brantley.

Simon says one of the strengths of this year’s team is their guard play.

“We will have dynamic guard play with dynamic shooters,” he said. “We can be really hard to guard and hard to match up with and we need to maximize that.”

Simon is still looking to pull more out of his team on the defensive end of the floor so far this season.

He said it showed in the finals against Dale.

“When five girls got after it and guarded on the defensive end we were special. The lack of all five guarding made us very average,” Simon said. “The one percent more by every girl on the floor defensively is measurable, repeatable and reproducible and we have not taken ownership of that yet.”

Washington is 4-1 this season  and will host Cashion Friday night. They will then travel to the Bertha Frank Teague Mid-America Classic December 29-31.

“I’m excited about our team moving forward and the amount of growth that is to be had in the toughness areas of the game,” Simon said.

Boys

Boys head coach Trevor Simon enters his fourth year at the helm of the Warrior program.

His team is fresh off a State tournament berth and he’s looking forward to the season getting in full swing.

“We’ve been missing a few football guys and we got thrown into the fire early,” Smith said. “But it will be good for us in the long run, even if we drop a couple games early that we wouldn’t lose later.”

Washington lost five seniors from last season’s team. They were Cooper Collins, Mason Adams, Gavin Davidson, Gavin Cortez and Teagen Foster.

This season Smith will rely heavily on the likes of Owen McCalip, Jack McKimmey, Jace Myers, Cole Beard and Evan Wells – a 6’3”, skilled guard.

Ryan Stidham and Hudson Gann will come off the bench.

Smith also expects football players Miller Orr, Jax Mitchell and Javon Hall to join the team after their season ended last Friday night.

“I feel good about our team and I’m excited about it,” Smith said. “We have pieces to get back to State. This team already understands what we want big-picture wise. It just comes down to minor, detailed things. We need to pay more attention to the details. That will help us.”

Smith thinks one of his team’s strengths this year will be their pace of play.

“We play fast and we’re scrappy on defense,” he said. “We’ll have some size and we’re solid on defense.”

The Warriors are 1-4 this year with several losses to ranked teams.

“I’m super excited about this season and ready to enjoy the journey,” Smith said.