The wins column may not accurately tell the story of the Wright City girls basketball season.

While the Wildcats fell short of .500 by several games, finishing 9-16, it was one of the best seasons over the past decade.

“I feel good about the progress we made,” said Coach Dan Friedel. “We got better from the beginning to the end of the year. I think our girls are starting to understand what it takes to be good, but we’ve got a long way to go in terms of reaching our ceiling.”

He believes the small successes the Wildcats experienced this season will be a driver toward future goals.

“Beating Silex on court warming was a good win for us,” said Friedel. “Then we went up to Mark Twain in early February and probably played our best game of year that night and ended up losing in overtime. That was that stretch of season we started to play well and talked about playing four quarters.”

Despite being dispatched during the first round of districts, the Wildcats proved they could compete against some area perennial powers, including Bowling Green.

“In February we started to really do some things that we’d been working on all year,” said Friedel. “We saw some things start to pay off with the level of play we had. We were starting to play the right way on both ends of the floor.”

Much of the Wildcats’ success came on the shoulders of youth, including freshman Jasmine Simpson, who was the team’s leading scorer.

“With Jasmine’s abilities, she can raise the level of play of others when she’s on the floor,” said Friedel. “She makes people around her better.”

He says versatility was key for the Wildcats this year.

“Offensively, it benefited us to have girls in different spots on the floor where they could be successful,” said Friedel. “We had girls who could play in different areas on the floor, but didn’t have anybody designated to spots.”

Friedel says this year’s success was a collaborative effort.

“I don’t know if we had one girl that was the leader of the team necessarily,” said Friedel. “It was kind of by committee leadership. Abby Raines and Emily Schanuel as juniors both stepped up. In terms of our attitude and effort in practice they kind of held the keys to that.”

Friedel says the Wildcats improved their offensive movement in the second half of the season.

“They gained an understanding of how important moving the ball is for us,” said Friedel. “People don’t like playing defense for 30 seconds, so if you work the ball around, we could get better shots. That just took breaking some bad habits.”

Defensively, Wright City relied heavily upon the zone attack.

“With our team, that’s what gave us the best chance most nights,” said Friedel. “We got better rebounding the basketball late, even though that was a killer for us. Moving forward we’ve got to do better with our man-to-man defense. That’s something I’d like to play more of in the future.”