The break has come and gone for the Powell Panther girls’ basketball team, with the Panthers prepping for their home opener this Thursday against Rocky Mountain at Powell High School.

Heading into the second part of the season the Panther girls hold a 3-3 record, as they’ve played more games before the break than years prior. In addition to playing tough competition to this point in the year they’ve played three of the top five teams in the state.

“We’ve gotten six games in, which is more than we’ve gotten in the past before Christmas,” coach Chelsea Kistler said. “So that was nice, and some tough opponents.”

Following the first part of the season, Kistler said that the Panthers have not honed in on any particular area to improve on, as the team has focused on every aspect of the game over the break.

“There’s no one thing that we’re putting all of our focus on. We’re working on our defense, our offense and just across the board everything that we were working on going into those two tournaments,” Kistler said. “Really it’s just early in the season, so it’s all us.”

Kicking off the January schedule the Panthers will host 2A Rocky Mountain (6-2) at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday with Kistler anticipating a zone defense from the Grizz.

“We’re gonna have to be able to find the gaps and the holes, attack seams in their zone and not settle for outside shots,” Kistler said. “So we’ll work a lot more zone this week to prepare for them, and they’ve got a pretty veteran team with a lot of juniors and seniors.”

After being on the road in Lander the first two weekends of the season before practicing over the winter break, Kistler is grateful the Panthers will finally get to play at home.

“Finally getting to play at home in front of your own fans and on the court that you’re practicing on every single day, hopefully we can defend our court and take home a win,” Kistler said.

In addition to taking on the Grizz, the Panthers are hoping to use this game as a springboard for the next two months of their season, which will begin with the Big Horn Basin Classic next weekend in Thermopolis and Worland, where the Panthers will be looking to defend their title.

“I’m hoping to get a little momentum going from this game and into the Big Horn Basin tournament, to hopefully just give us a lot of confidence and understanding of what we do well and fix the things that we don’t execute the best,” Kistler said, “and be the best version we can be going into our first round of conference.”