REGION 4B: BEARCATS ELIMINATED IN OPENER
Young Freeman Academy/Marion team finishes season 3-16
JEREMY WALTNER – PUBLISHER
The 2024-25 basketball campaign started well enough for the Freeman Academy/Marion girls. The Bearcats breezed past Parker for a 41-11 win on the opening night of the season Dec. 5 and then blew away Colome 37-6 two nights later to start 2-0. But it wasn’t long before the youth and inexperience of the FAM girls started to show.
Losses to Chester and Bridgewater-Emery followed and put the girls at 2-2. By Christmas they had fallen to 2-4, and by mid-January the Bearcats stood at 2-8.
A 49-15 win over Flandreau Indian on Jan. 17 may have been a lift, but it was all losses after that — including a 37-25 defeat at the hands of Tripp-Delmont/Armour in the Region 4B Tournament opening round in Tripp Monday, Feb. 24.
When it was all said and done, the FAM girls walked away from the season with a 3-17 record — its three wins coming against teams with a combined 4-55 record.
“It’s one of those seasons where, reflecting on it, it’s hard to know what to say,” said Nathan Epp, a coach of more than 30 years who just finished his sixth season coaching the Bearcat girls. “We knew we were going to be young and inexperienced; I suppose the best way to describe it is inconsistent. We had some games where we were really fun to watch. We had good games against good teams; against Gayville-Volin, Andes Central and Centerville we played pretty solid. Other times we played without energy and excitement.”
That was the case in last week’s region game at Tripp, where the Bearcats couldn’t get anything going against the Nighthawks, who built a lead in the first quarter and held it.
“We came out really flat,” said Epp. “I was hoping we would come out and play like we had in some of our better games, where we played hard for a full four quarters, but it is what it is.”
Yet there were positives from this three-win season.
When FAM was playing well, the girls looked better than Epp had expected given their inexperience, and different players took the lead in scoring during this three-month stretch of basketball. Epp was able to play as many as nine on any given night — which reflects contributions from more than just a handful — and this year’s team showed more aggressiveness and a willingness to shoot the ball than in the past, even if they didn’t connect.
“One game we shot 7%,” he says, “but I can’t complain about any of the shots that were taken.”
But the coach’s biggest takeaway from the season was the quality of girls who wore the Bearcats uniform.
“They’re just fantastic kids,” Epp said. “I’ve coached some really good teams and have also been blessed to coach teams that have struggled. And I have never had a group that is so much fun to be around as I have the past couple of years.”
He points specifically to the two seniors on the team — Marion’s Hailey Stahl and Freeman Academy’s Sieta Wiersma.
Epp says Stahl was the team’s most consistent defender and one of its best communicators; “She was always talking, and we need more of that,” he said “She just likes to have fun.”
As for Wiersma, who first started playing basketball a few seasons ago, “I wish she had started playing when she was fifth grade,” Epp said. “She has done everything we asked of her and, every year, she has gotten better.”
The coach said he has not totaled up this season’s stats, but expects Wiersma pulled down 12 or 13 rebounds per game, and probably had close to 10 points per game; “She’s flirting with an average of a double-double, which is rare,” he says “She just worked hard and played hard all the time.”
And that’s what it’s going to take for the Bearcats to improve.
“A lot of it has to do with how much time and effort they as a group have put into the sport,” he said. “When you put a lot of extra time into something, it means something to you and you want to work hard to protect it. We’re just not there yet. Until we get six, seven, eight girls willing to make the effort, it’s not going to change.”
