The Wright City girls basketball team lost its top two leading scorers from a team that finished 3-21 last season, and first-year Head Coach Ashley Moore is looking to start over.

After leading scorer Amy Janowski graduated and starting forward Abbey Jaspering decided to forego her senior season to focus on softball, Moore was left with little scoring production from last year.

Kailyn Gudermuth, who averaged 1.7 points and 2.5 rebounds last season, also is sitting out this season.

“They’re both focusing on other sports they’ve excelled in,” Moore said. “It’s definitely going to hurt size-wise, but I think the girls here understand why they aren’t playing, and I wish them the best of luck. Now it’s about the girls understanding what we’ve got and stepping up.”

Senior Jada Hunter (3.9 points) is the leading returning scorer for the Wildcats, and Moore hopes to lay the foundation for her program with a younger roster this season.

“I think a lot of times, they go back to what they’ve done in the past, and I think it’s hard for them to transition and kind of understand why there needs to be a change,” Moore said. “I was explaining to them earlier today why I get on them for the nitpicky things and how those affect the big picture later on.”

Wright City returns seven players who scored last season, and Moore has spent the first three weeks of practice implementing her system.

“Some of the kids have played for me before at the middle school level, but there is a lot of new stuff that I’m incorporating now, too. So it’s all about getting everybody on the same page,” she said. “But it’s going really well. We’ve been hit with a few injuries already, so we’re really trying to get everybody healthy again and get everybody bought in to what we’re doing here.”

Two players who have stood out so far have been junior Melina Campbell and senior Alyssa Hart.

“Melina is always positive and is always encouraging others, and the same with Alyssa,” Moore said. “She’s more of a quiet leader, but she really understands basketball a lot and that really helps us.”

The Wildcats open their season Friday at home against Elsberry at 7 p.m., and host Transportation and Law Tuesday.

“We talked as a team last week about not setting record-specific goals, but when people look at Wright City basketball, what do we want them to say about it?” Moore said, adding that she has three goals she wants her program to meet each season.

“We’ll be competitive in everything we do in practice or in games; we want to be a true family and have that unity with good communication; and we want to have good work ethic and perseverance,” she said. “We just want to fight through adversity all year.”