Salt Lake Lutheran teams have right chemistry

Every coach knows that team chemistry can make or break a season, but no one has managed to create a foolproof formula for creating or maintaining it. Fortunately for the basketball coaches at Salt Lake Lutheran, their teams already have it in spades.

Although both the boys' and girls' basketball teams have faced challenges in the form of graduation, injuries and inexperience, they have stuck together through it all.

The boys' team, for example, has managed to hang with the rest of Region 17 despite losing all of its offensive firepower from a year ago.

"All in all, we lost about 54 points per game from last season," says Schrader. "We've had to make a lot of adjustments in terms of our offense to try to compensate for all of our players that graduated."

Schrader has done a remarkable job of finding ways to win, especially considering the vast majority of his roster spots are filled by underclassmen.

"We're a young team," says Schrader. "We only have three seniors, but those three seniors have done a great job of picking up the slack so far."

Of the three seniors suiting up for Salt Lake Lutheran, only Darryl Ezidore has any varsity experience to speak of. Ezidore, who plays every position from small forward to center, has done an outstanding job of patrolling the paint all season long.

Schrader's other two seniors, guards Paulino Beach and Ian Hammett, are also solid defenders. Both players have improved considerably since showing up at Salt Lake Lutheran, and have become the team's most consistent shooters from beyond the arc.

"Paulino and Ian have come a long way over the last year or so," says Schrader. "They are both playing great defense right now, and Ian added an outside shot to his game that just wasn't there before."

Although inexperience hasn't been an issue for the girls' team, the Lady Lynx have had to face plenty of problems of their own. A rash of injuries at the beginning of the season decimated their roster, leaving them with little depth.

"We only have nine girls on the team, but those nine girls play very well together," says head coach Joe Hicks. "We're much better than we were last year, and I think team chemistry has a lot to do with that."

The Lady Lynx owe much of their success to a trio of talented seniors. Point guard Carly Varner leads the team in assists, small forward Shalimar Davis is the team's top scorer, and center Lindsey Plant has a monopoly on rebounds.