Midway through the second half, Cloquet senior Katie Turner broke loose on consecutive plays for fast break layups to help lift the Lumberjacks to a 38-28 summer league win over Cromwell-Wright on Wednesday, June 30.
Cloquet’s summer league games, however, are secondary to the twice weekly practices run by coach Heather Young. Young said the team is focused on improving their fundamental skills during the summer, when the players have more time to focus on those areas.
“The summer months are just used for maintenance and hopefully getting better in regards to shooting, ball handling — all those little technical skills,” Coach Young said. “If you’re going to make a difference with yourself as a player, it's done in the summer months. Once the season is going, it’s hard to accelerate or get better at that point.”
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The Lumberjacks have high hopes for the 2021-22 season, with six seniors on the roster and some promising young players ready to step into larger roles.
Junior Alexa Snesrud has played on the varsity squad since she was an eighth-grader and said her rapport with senior Maddie Young has developed over the last four years playing together.
“Maddie and I connect really well,” Snesrud said. “I love getting the ball into her and I think our chemistry has really gotten a lot better over the years. As far as our team, our defense has improved ... and hopefully we’ll get a lot more shooting and we’ll become an offensive threat as well.”
With the core group of seniors and sophomores like Quinn Danielson, Ava Carlson and Kiley Issendorf ready to step up, Young thinks Cloquet is set up to “do some damage” in Section 7 AAA next season.
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What’s more, the players are doing the work now to accomplish that goal next winter.
“I’m looking forward to this season,” Young said. “The girls seem to be having a lot of fun with each other, there’s a lot of laughing and yet the intensity level is there. This is going to make a difference, because the girls show up every day, no matter how tired they are, no matter what they’ve got going on, they’ve scheduled time to be in the gym.”
