Avila Women’s Basketball get slow start to season

By Brad Ziegler

The Avila women’s basketball team is kicking off the 2023-24 season with second year coach Remy Wolfe at the helm.  Coach Wolfe had taken over an Avila team that had finished 21-10 in 2021-22 and reached the conference championship game in two of the prior three seasons.  Last year’s team started slowly, losing 18 of their first 20 games, but began to turn things around during the last month of the season, winning 3 of their last eight games.

The 2023-24 lineup features last season’s leading scorer, junior guard Hannah Smith, and incoming freshman guard Marlie Wright, who has led the team in scoring in three of their first four games this season.  Senior transfer Hannah Pinkston and Junior transfer Madilyn Melton are also expected to start for the Eagles but playing time may be shared by nearly the entire roster as Coach Wolfe works to find the best lineup.  

“We have a lot of great additions to the team this year,” says Wolfe. “Hannah Pinkston a senior guard transfer from Truman State will bring a lot to our team on both ends of the floor as well as Madilyn Melton who is a sophomore transfer from Benedictine College. We are definitely still looking for a cohesive group of girls who can give us the majority of the minutes.”  

The Eagles roster is filled with area high school graduates, as is their coach, a 2014 graduate of Blue Springs South who played collegiately for the University of Nebraska Omaha and Truman State and served as an assistant coach at Avila for three seasons before becoming head coach.

Like the Avila men’s team, the women’s team kicks off conference play early in their schedule, with the first of 23 KCAC games ending in an eleven point loss to St. Mary on the road followed by a win and three more losses. 

 Coach Wolfe feels the Eagles are poised to move up in the standings this year. 

“As long as we continue to grow and build this year I feel really good about our chances to move up in the conference,” she says.