Thunder eye another trip to ACAA tourney

from Winter Sports 2022

Work

BY JOSH YODER Sports reporter jyoder@lewistownsentinel.com

BELLEVILLE — Belleville Mennonite looks to build off of their success from a season ago after going 11-8 and made it all the way to the District 6 Class A playoffs.

The Thunder will be led again by Brian Renno who is excited to get back to work for the new the season and will be joined by assistant coach Ally Zook.

“I’m excited, I feel a little bit more prepared than I did last year. I felt like the girls responded well to the coaching change last year,” Renno said. “The returning players kinda of understand and expect how things are going to go this year and I think that can be benefitual.”

“We can try to build on what we did last year,” Renno continued. “We had a fairly successful season last year. Hopefully we can build on that.”

The biggest difference for the Thunder this coming season is the fact this will be the first time that coach Renno has a chance to have a preseason. One of the major factors from last season was Belleville Mennonite made not have a season due to the unexpected resigning of coach Garrett Baublitz a month prior to the season.

Renno stepped in to take over and helped guided the team and slowly build the chemistry between himself and the team.

“With little preparation, we really worked with what the girls already knew. Coach Baublitz did a good job of preparing them,” Renno said.

Another difference this season for Belleville Mennonite is the some new players coming into the program. Coach Renno hopes to help bring them along and help them adjust to the program.

“We’re having a little bit of inexperience coming this year with a couple players. How we handle that with our low numbers that we have,” Renno said. “We’re going to need relay on a couple girls that haven’t played before so we’re trying to prepare those girls for the varsity competition.”

But the Thunder will have plenty of experience returning to help along the way including leading scorer and ACAA all-star Sonya Yoder. Other starters include Natalie Yoder, Karina Renno and Miriam Stoltzfus.

“The strength is we do have four returning starters who logged a lot of minutes last year,” Renno said. “I feel like those four players know what is coming. We’re going to be counting on them pretty heavily to carry the load.”

The Thunder will be facing a familiar foe this season much like last year as Belleville Mennonite will be having to deal with low numbers on the roster as there will be only six players. Coach Renno is looking to keep his players off the injured list.

“We’re teaching the girls to be just mindful and intelligent of how we just play one on one, we play two on two,” Renno said.

“We want to be aggressive but we do not want to be overly aggressive and clumpsy. Just warming up properly, stretching properly, getting rest all those stuff.”

Another challenge the Thunder are looking to fix will be replacing the presence of Chloe Renno who gradulated a season ago. Renno is leaving a big gap down in the paint both offensely as well as defensively.

“Chloe is going to be a challenge to fill those shoes. She understood the game, she was really good in the paint and around the rim,” Renno said. “So replacing her, maybe by committee, I’d like to keep the ball in Sonya’s hands, in Karina’s hands and Natalie’s hands, but I think inevitably one of those players are going to have to fill in some paint time.”

There is a roadblock in the Thunder’s quest to repeat the same success and that team according to coach Renno will be Meadowbrook Christian.

“It’s Meadowbrook, I don’t think they lost anybody last year,” Renno said. “They’re well coached, they have two realy nice returning players.”

But the ultimate goal for Belleville Mennonite is to continue to show competitiveness despite the low numbers and build upon from last season.

“Our biggest goal is to compete in all the games we play whether its in league play or nonleague play,” Renno said.

“Another goal is staying healthy and representing our scholl well to the people that are watching us.

One of our other goals is to try and get back to the ACAA conference tournament and finish in the top three and if we can get to the PIAA postseason that would be icing on the cake.”

Head coach: Brian Renno (2nd Season)

Assistant: Ally Zook