WINONA LAKE — The Lakeland Christian Academy girls basketball team is embarking on its first season as an IHSAA-sanctioned team with a first-year coach. After serving as a probationary IHSAA team last year, the LCA Lady Cougars are now totally separated from the Indiana Christian Athletic Association. Taking the girls into their next phase is first-year coach Ty Propp, who replaces Jay Lavender as coach of the team. Despite this being his first year at LCA, it’s not his first go-round as a coach of a girls basketball team. “I had coached girls basketball back in Colorado and really enjoyed it,” he said. “I enjoy the attitude the girls bring to the game.” The past two years, Propp has been an assistant under Scott Blum at Grace College, so the transition from college talent to high school may take some time. “It’s definitely a transition,” he said. “You get a broad spectrum on the high school level, because you get girls with all different talents and abilities. “Our goal is to get the girls to excel in basketball here,” he added. “We want to bring their level up.” Competing as a full-fledged IHSAA team, LCA will look to replace the graduated Jo Boren, who’s playing at Grace College after leading LCA in scoring and rebounding last year. Despite the loss of their top player from last year’s 2-19 squad, LCA does have plenty of returnees, including five seniors. “Our call to the seniors is, ‘We need you to step up and be leaders,’” Propp said. “We’ve just pounded that into them the past week. They need to be leaders on the court, off the court.” Those senior leaders are Emilee Catron, Megan Lang, Jessica Goss, Alisa Gross and Frani Gerst. For a school the size of LCA, its girls basketball team is proportionately as big, as the rest of the roster is filled by juniors Morgan Holsclaw, Hannah Remington and Julianne Haines. “At this point, I have some (junior varsity) players that could potentially come up, but I really want to get this varsity squad settled,” Propp said. “Make sure we have some synergy there, then work our way down.” And for now, Propp’s working on hustle out of the girls. From there, he can work on plays and strategies. “Heart and discipline are always things you can cross boundaries with,” he said. “We have a lot of heart here, so we’ll work on the discipline side. “We have a scrappy, fast team,” Propp added. “That’s kind of been the norm for them (at LCA) for the last few years. We have some bigs, so we can go inside and develop a more all-around approach. We want to spread the ball around. We have a lot of girls who fire on a lot of pistons. If I can get a lot of them into play, that’s to my advantage instead of relying on just one.” For now, it’s baby steps for the Lady Cougars, who open play tonight at home against Northfield, followed by an afternoon game Saturday at home against Michigan City Marquette Catholic. “The expectation I have is to carry a lot of heart into games and a commitment to playing well,” Propp said. “My overall goal would be to cut turnovers down. Last year, I saw a lot of mental mistakes in some DVDs that I was able to watch. They just didn’t have a good focus. Defensively, they never touched another body when going up for a rebound. We’re going to change that.”
