A near-perfect season saw the Powell Middle School girls’ seventh grade basketball team finish with a 14-1 record and a conference championship.

The Cubs used a deep roster that constantly rotated throughout the season and they defeated their first 10 opponents by double digits en route to a 10-0 record.

During the first 10 games of the season the Cubs averaged 37.8 points per game while holding their opponents to just 11.9 points per game.

In those 10 games the Cubs won eight games by more than 20 points, and held five teams under double-digit points in that stretch.

The lone loss of the season came on the road to Cody in late November, with the Cubs losing to their rivals just before the Thanksgiving break 26-24 after having already defeated the Fillies earlier in the year 34-17.

“We pretty much laid an egg that game,” coach Bryan Bonander said. “It was our fifth game in seven days and we were pretty tired.”

After the break the Cubs regrouped, posting a win over Burlington 37-12 before heading into the conference tournament.

In Lovell during the conference tournament, the seventh graders continued their domination, winning 35-7 over Greybull, 33-24 over Worland and 52-21 over Cody in the championship game.

“That (championship) was our redemption game,” Bonander said. “As a coach you want your girls to peak at the right time. They did, they really got it together and that was the best I saw those girls play this year.”

The A team consisted of a starting five/six players who contributed from the get go, including Jesi Agee, Sam Edgell, Kindyle Floy, Autumn Kidd, Veronica Kovach and Stella Shoopman.

Bonander said Agee was the motor of the team, one of the few players he has had to tell in his career to tone it down a little bit.

Edgell was one of the toughest players on the team, pounding the ball inside for the Cubs.

Floy led the Cubs throughout the season, and scored more than 20 points in two of the three playoff games to help pace the seventh grade team.

Kidd pushed through a minor ankle injury sustained in a game against Rocky Mountain in November, but did not miss any games despite the injury.

“Two days later we played Cody and she was in that game,” Bonander said. “It surprised me, but she’s a tough kid.”

Kovach was the shooter on the team, while Shoopman was another tough player who rotated with Edgell.

Additional players who came onto the A team and contributed were Kourtnie Ashcraft, Hailee Gorsuch, Peyton Ott, Madilyn Croft and Charlie Eastman.

One player Bonander is excited to see moving forward is Ott, who is a big physical player who he said has not had enough experience to fully develop her game yet.

Bonander said that there is typically a cliff where talent falls off rapidly at the middle school level, but that was not the case this year as the talent only gradually declined, which also led to a successful 8-4 record for the B team this campaign.

“We rarely see a winning record with the B team but this season we did good,” Bonander said.

One reason Bonander felt his team had success this season was splitting his team into smaller orange and black squads during practices and for some games, allowing girls to compete against each other at every level and give them an opportunity to play.

“It’s fun when you win,” Bonander said. “These girls have been on a traveling team together since the third grade. That A team was primarily those girls, they had a lot of those skills already and we didn’t have to start from square one.”