By Megan Kelley
Staff Writer
ORION TWP. — The Lake Orion High School varsity girls basketball team started the 2022-23 season off securing victories over Oxford, Pontiac and Lutheran Northwest high schools.
The team hosted Oxford High School on Nov. 29 for their season opener, defeating the Wildcats 50-41.
Senior captain Kylie Heck led the Dragons’ scoring with 17 points and six rebounds.
Chloe Wiegers and Maddie Ebbert, who are also senior captains, each had nine points.
Ryann Pawlaczyk added another six points, while senior captain Taylor Dinda contributed three steals, three assists and six rebounds.
In the fourth quarter, Heck went down with an ankle injury and is expected to be out for the next several weeks.
On Dec. 7, the Dragons hosted Pontiac High School, scorched the Phoenix, 62-6.
Ebbert led the Dragons’ scoring with 19 points, followed by Wiegers with 10. Twelve of Lake Orion’s players added points in the blowout victory.
On Friday, the ladies headed to Oakland University to take on Lutheran Northwest where they defeated Crusaders 53-29.
Leading scorer for the Dragons was sophomore Izzy Wotlinkski with 10 points, followed by Pawlaczyk and Ebbert with eight points each.
The wins put the Dragons at 3-0 overall, and is one of the best starts to the season the team has had in several years.
Lake Orion remains in the Red division in the OAA this year and are looking to continue to build off of their successes last season, which included the program’s first district championship in more than a decade.
“We want to contend and we’d love to win another district championship,” said head coach Bob Brydges. “If we can get out of the district’s, we’re hosting regional’s here in Lake Orion and for me, I saw what our home crowd did for us last year in district’s and I’d really like to see what that would look like in a regional setting.”
The team this year returns nine seniors, seven of whom played a big part in last year’s season.
Lake Orion faces an uphill battle in the Red division, which hosts a number of good basketball programs including West Bloomfield, the defending state champs.
Despite that, Brydges still has high expectations for the team.
“If we ever figure out how good we are, we could be dangerous,” Brydges said. “There’s a lot of untapped potential.”
The Dragons are expected to continue to utilize their man-to-man defense, something that the program has been focusing on since Brydges took the helm four years ago.
“This team is built on defense. It’s what won us a district championship last year. It’s what will win us a lot of games this year, playing that stingy, in your face, head-to-head defense,” Brydges said.
Captains this year include Dinda, Heck, Ebbert and Weigers; all of whom already have college offers.
With so many seniors on the team this year, Brydges has also implemented a staff appreciation element for the seniors to thank a staff member of their choosing before home games.
“This group of seniors, we want to develop some traditions and leave their legacy here,” Brydges said. “Every single home game, one of our seniors will honor a staff member of their choosing. I have no input on it, they write their own speech and they get up and speak in front of the entire crowd about what that particular person has meant to them as an athlete, as a student, as a person.”
The girls head to Notre Dame Prep on Tuesday to take on the Fighting Irish after Lake Orion Review press time.