The Aberdeen Central girls’ basketball team will feature experienced youth this season.

The Golden Eagles have high expectations, but coach Mikayla Arechigo said there may be some growing pains as well.

“We’re definitely hoping to improve throughout the season,” Arechigo said. “We have some experience from last season, but it’s young experience, so I think that we might have some growing pains as the season starts, but hopefully by the end of the season we’ll have a pretty solid group of competitive girls.”

The Eagles have already been working on their competitive edge during the offseason, including participating in two team camps, as well as open gym opportunities. However, due to the number of players participating in other sports, Arechigo said working around fall activities was a challenge.

“It’s kind of hard. A lot of these girls do multiple sports, so they had great success in volleyball this fall, they had great success in soccer this fall, so they’ve been busy with their other sports,” Arechigo said. “We did have a few open gyms in the fall here as well for the girls that had wrapped up their soccer season and girls that weren’t in volleyball.”

Now that fall sports have ended, the entire team is back on the court and ready for the challenges that lie ahead. Central returns several key players, and will rely on post players sophomore Taryn Hermansen and freshman Lauryn Burckhard for a presence below the basket. However, the team will be without senior Grace Kuch, who suffered an injury late in the volleyball season.

“Lauryn Burckhard and Taryn Hermansen at the post are probably two of our more experienced players,” Arechigo said. “Having Grace Kuch go down in the volleyball season with an injury kind of hurt our plans for that post rotation a little bit, but that opens up some opportunities for some younger kids.”

On the perimeter, the Golden Eagles will look to a host of seniors, including Madison Miller, Ayrlie Waldo, Caydi Withers, and Taylor Lyke, for leadership. While the experience will be plenty, there will be some younger, inexperienced players that Arechigo says will need to step into bigger roles this winter.

“Emma Dohrer has been playing pretty well, as well as Kaylee Donat and Ava Yeske,” Arechigo said. “Taylin Kleffman has been looking like she’s going to be competing for some time as well.”

When looking at the Golden Eagles schedule, Arechigo says she does not want her players to look too far ahead, but instead focus on the next opponent in front of them.

“Our strategy for looking at our schedule is really just going to be taking it one game at a time and making progress,” Arechigo said. “Using that game to make progress for the next game. I don’t think this is a team where we can really get ahead of ourselves. It’s really just building day-by-day, building game-by-game to get to where we want to be.”

One notable difference to this year’s schedule is Dec. 29 when the Golden Eagles will play in the Hoop City Classic at the Corn Palace. Central will match up with Thunder Basin, Wyo., a team that has become an annual visitor to the event. Because the schedule does not change much from year to year for the Golden Eagles, Arechigo said it will be a great opportunity for the team to see a different opponent than what it is used to.

“It’s always nice to compete against someone that we haven’t seen,” Arechigo said. “I know last year when we went down to the Pentagon, it was just kind of a fun experience to play a different team and a team that we don’t really know a ton about and that doesn’t know a lot about us. It’s always nice to get a game over that break, otherwise just practicing over that Christmas break can get a little long.”

Central begins its season Friday when it hosts Rapid City Central. While the team has set goals for the season, Arechigo says she does not want her team solely focused on the big picture, but rather, the small goals that come with each day.

“I really am trying not to focus so much on wins and losses, but just focusing on making that progress, because ultimately the wins and losses are going to come or not come,” Arechigo said. “If we can just focus on making that good progress and staying together as a team, and focusing on helping our team throughout their roles that are going to help our team be most successful, that’s ultimately where we will reach those goals.”